eLearning is dead
Quote: "Two weeks ago at the eLearning 2003 Conference in Manchester, UK, I announced that eLearning was dead."
Comment: Very short post...but makes the point well: elearning as it was envisioned over the last several years is dead...it's not viable, and it's not practical. My bet: over the next year/two, organizations will fall over themselves promoting the "business value" of elearning - terms like metrics, ROI, strategies, solutions, innovations will abound. Sad thing is - they'll all still be missing the mark. Elearning (or whatever people will start calling it soon) is needed because the undercurrent of what drives society has changed - it's a digital world...and original elearning initiatives sought to place a template over traditional education and call it "new". In reality, the industrial model is largely out of date...and anything built on it is outdated before it begins...
World of Ends and Means
Quote: "I became keenly aware that two evolving worlds understand each other poorly...One world is typified by the World of Ends, in which Doc Searls and David Wienberger espoused a very customer-centric view of the Net...there's also another world-let's call it the World of Means. In that world, we have large enterprises and governments. While they don't always use it well, large companies and governments have the means with which to accomplish things, for better or worse."
Comment: Explores digital identity from two extreme perspectives...and comes to the conclusion that: enterprise "systems must accept the customer-centric forms of identity that will ultimately emerge."
Coping With Digital Rights Management
Comment: PowerPoint presentation by Stephen Downes on digital rights management. His first slide sums it up nicely: DRM is a multi-faceted concern - ranging from things that people want to share (often the end user), to things people want to protect (often the content creator)...and issues of personal privacy. DRM is a murky (but important) issue. Unfortunately, through efforts of some groups (RIAA comes to mind), consumers are treated like the enemy...and the recognition of the need for some type of DRM is lost in the emotionalism.
International Network for Social Network Analysis
Comment: Resource page for social network analysis (SNA) - lists people, software, concepts, etc. Much more here than the first glance reveals...
Hacking the Xbox
Quote: "It's sold as a videogame console, but it can also double as a DVD player. Still, the Xbox can be so much more."
Comment: This article highlights how closed/proprietary systems kill innovation...and how a little creativity (though it's not quite legal - by Microsoft's standards) can take a product well beyond the original creator's vision. That's the beauty of open source...
Story
Quote: "Working with stories is the best way we know to:
Social Networking Models
Quote: "Another wave of online communities is underway. The first wave, beginning with the Well, took advantage of the social adoption of email to build community upon Usenet, bulletin boards and forums. A basis of trust in email-style interfaces and conventions enabled pooled discussion. This wave takes advantage of the social adoption of the web to build community upon web-native tools. Because the web is more diverse environment so too are the tools. The physical and logical infrastructure of the web has reached a maturity while usage has surpassed a tipping point where it is ingrained in most people's lives. As people have become participants on the web, they are building a new social infrastructure, connection by connection."
Comment: Part of Ross Mayfield's ongoing exploration of social tools/environments...
Mixing, Tinkering and Reusing in the Digital Age
Comment: Short, point-form post of a John Seely Brown presentation. Quotables: "The digital divide today is between today's digital kids and yesterday's analog professors and teachers...learning in the digital age really takes place through practice like in the opensource community, not through old methods of lecture and receive...Kids link, lurk and try, they have to be able to discover, experiment and try things."
BlogShares
More for personal amusement than anything else...basically it combines the joys of stock markets...by assigning value to each blog. elearnspace registers at an anemic $40.51. I often wonder who has time to develop these things??
I think we'll see much more of this: Digital Resume (via Ben Hammersley)...as our society stops thinking traditional, and starts thinking digital. Excellent example of technology as a communication tool.
Is blogging really making an impact? Is it a fad? Does it have a future? Check out Will's post: Tipped
Simple, layperson's guide to speaking "geek": Darwin's Glossary
Wireless LANs Set For Growth Spurt
Quote: "The number of wireless LAN users, expected to number 4.2 million this year, will increase to more than 31 million by 2007, Gartner's study says. However, the increase will lag behind the climb in the number of "hot spots"--zones for wireless access to the Internet and E-mail via notebooks, handhelds, and the newest generation of data-ready mobile phones."
Making the Switch to Open Source Gradually
Quote: "Some of the best free and open source applications for Linux also have versions that run very well in Windows and Mac OS X. So if you have not yet tried or are hesitant to try Linux, you might download and try some of these Windows applications now, for free. You'd be surprised how good they are, and how they can completely replace Microsoft's applications, including opening and saving to Microsoft's file formats."
Comment: Great list...if you're new to open source tools, spend a few minutes looking at the tools listed.
Mapping Relationships
Quote: "Much of the past work in knowledge management has focused on the information items rather than the relationships between the creators and consumers of the information. The first major application of the relationships among consumers and producers was Google. A simplistic explanation of the technology is that Google weights rankings by the relationships betweem people who produce and consume information."
Seb links on the subject of creating change. From my experience, the greatest barrier to technology adoption is not technology - it's resistance to change. Often, I don't think technology is even a factor at all...the comfort of "staying the same" is too strong to muster the effort required to change. Every elearning initiative (to get instructors to move on line, or to get employees/students to use online learning) must have a change management strategy.
I've posted this before: Harvard - H2O...and I'm still trying to wrap my head around potential uses. The concept focuses on "building an interlocking collection of communities based on the free creation and exchange of ideas."
Quote: "The recent development of the Internet has been overwhelmingly driven by commercial interests. Commercial websites must ultimately focus on making money. The founding premise of the H2O project is that the university world has something to add to the growth of the Internet that the commercial world cannot contribute. H2O aims to apply Internet technologies to the underlying aims of the academy -- the free creation and exchange of ideas and the communities formed around those ideas -- both within and beyond the confines of the traditional academy."
Beta version of Taxomita is now available. Taxomita is "a web-based authoring application that lets you create distributed, hierarchical, faceted metadata, and use it to index any page on the web." I'm looking forward to trying it out...looks promising.
David Wiley has a blog (that's new to me). We seem to share some similar views on the concept of open content...it would be great if opportunities existed to collaborate.
Your Open Source Plan
Quote: "The open-source movement is helping turn significant chunks of the IT infrastructure into commodities by offering free alternatives to proprietary software. The promise of the past several years has begun to materialize as one by one the hurdles to open-source adoption have dropped away. Major enterprises are running mission-critical functions on open-source IT. Big vendors have lined up to support it or port their applications to it."
Comment: This article focuses mainly on the cost benefit of open source (strange how you'd find that in CIO...:))...overlooking some of the philosophical principles (and some would argue - greater functionality). Still...a good article - worth the read.
Pedantic Web or Semantic Web?
Quote: "The real (i.e., short-term ROI-driven) value of the semantic Web will not be in the area of the Internet-it will be for businesses struggling to drive down operational costs or eek out efficiencies in mission-critical processes."
Comment: Semantic Web doesn't know what it wants to be when it's grown up yet...:). The idea of findable information is great...the process is difficult...and the application is diverse. Discussions about the semantic Web often confuse these three unique concepts...result: people talking past each other.
Standardization Progress: A Report from IEEE LTSC Meetings
Quote: "The IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee (LTSC) recently met (March 17-18) in Paris. It has made significant progress on a number of e-learning standardization issues, addressing the ready availability of official standards documents, the further development of metadata bindings, and the establishment and strengthening of ties with other standardization work."
Investing in knowledge sharing - starting on the weblog learning curve
Quote: "Many of the challenges of knowledge management are either created or aggravated by the information and technology that comprise so much of our organizational context. As technologies like email let us operate organizations of much greater scale and scope, they also create a demand for knowledge sharing across timezones and oceans that we haven't had to address before."
Comment: Yes!...and unfortunately, a perception seems to exist that the tools needed must be complex. They must be usable. Functionality can be added later. Email works (like IM) because it's very simple. Other great concepts (collaborative tools like groove come to mind) are intuitive and fairly usable...but most people seem to have a 10 second rule: If you can't explain it to me in a few sentences, I don't have time for it...question: do we adjust the tools? Or try and change the people?
I've been following this blog recently: D'Arcy Norman's Learning Commons Weblog. It's a bit more technical than many learning blogs...deals with XML, learning objects, sofware, etc. Nice.
Interesting to see how this will evolve as a community of practice tool: Meetup ("Meetup is a new, free service that organizes local gatherings about anything, anywhere.")
Next Generation Course Management Systems (.pdf) via EdTechPost
Comment: Offers practical suggestions (ability to share materials and modules across course containers...and technical suggestions (need for webDAV driven upload/dowload)
Journal of Digital Information via rdhyee
Comment: Includes design, assessment, learning object articles.
Learning to Play, Playing to Learn
Quote: "I began to do some research on game-based learning and found some pretty compelling reasons for using computer or online games in education: engagement through fantasy, challenge, curiosity and discovery. These are the very elements that make them entertaining. They are enormously interactive and can be very challenging. One can play with someone in the same room or across the globe. They challenge players to create, plan, strategize and solve problems."
Comment: Game-based learning holds great promise as a means of creating engaged, interactive learning environments. Unfortunately, the promise is still more talk than action...except in a few isolated pockets of activity. Main reason is the time and expense. On the continuum of elearning development, game-based learning is definitely on the advanced/complex/expensive side.
This issue of Sidebars has great links and resources related to games.
Site List - Social Networking
Quote: "My continuing review of social networking tools and software has lead me to many sites each with slightly different functionality twists. This collection listed today is in no particular order merely a summary to explore. My key interest is in the functionalities and how they are impacting on consumer experiences and benefits. Too many of these use copycat functionalities and are not addressing consumer issues. For broad use... they must be kept simple."
A few example of learning object repositories (from EdTechDev):
- VCILT
- UWM
Stallman on Copyright via Stephen
Quote: "There are three freedoms. Freedom 0 is the freedom to run the program. Freedom 1 is the freedom to help yourself by studying the program and changing it to suit your needs. Freedom 2 is the freedom to help your neighbor by giving them a copy of the software. Freedom 3 is the freedom to help build your community by working together to build that software."
Some RSS resources (via Shifted Librarian): RSS Readers...and RSS Resources
(Excerpt from an email I recently sent Jay Cross during a conversation on concerns with education...)
There are obviously many challenges facing education, but the most central relates to how learning is perceived. Education institutions have been slow to respond to the changing needs of learners...and it relates to the holy grail of education: the course.
Until courses are eliminated...or let me rephrase that, until courses move from "do it once for all students"...to "do it continually for each student"...education will at best be the equivalent of putting new siding on an old house.
Think of the learner experience today:
Day 1: Go to college. Sit down. Be lectured to.
Day 2 - graduation: Repeat day 1.
It should be:
Day 1 - 14: evaluation of previous learning, creation of portfolio, interviews, etc.
Day 15 - graduation: personalized learning based on initial evaluation (which is updated regularly to reflect additional skills acquired outside of school).
This model is not possible as long as institutions think courses. In fact, students will always be an add-on, an after thought, in any system where the primary focus is teaching canned, structured content...with no regard for the learner on the other side.
The solution to moving to a new model for learning is in learning objects. Most often, LOs greatest benefit is listed as its reusability. This is a bit off. The greatest value in LOs is the ability to build education on a model other than courses...and to provide personalized instruction.
Obviously, moving to learning objects is an incredible system shock -psychologically...and on two additional levels: the cost, the time. Through collaborative development and sharing, learning objects can be created quickly (by many various groups) and inexpensively (no proprietary content).
Currently, in education, elearning has not been adopted quickly...mainly because instructors are expected to do it all on their own...they have to become technologists in order to teach online - so they have to learn java script, HTML, how to design interactive activities, graphic design, instructional design, etc. This is the wrong approach. Any efficient economy moves to specialization...and integration. Skill sets become more specialized...and there is increased reliance on the skills of others. Education is not getting this message.
However, via DOSC (or any similar concept), a community of specialists gathers...content experts rely on others who have technical skills, ID understanding, etc. Together they create the culture of a vibrant economy - specialized skills working in collaboration...so, to put it simply: learning objects are the means whereby education can transform itself to meet the needs of learners today.
What do we know about knowledge?
Quote: "To understand the generation of knowledge it is necessary to understand each of these three processes: acquisition, assessment and integration. Though each may be described separately, they occur in tandem and with respect to each other. An experience that cannot be integrated will not be acquired; an experience that cannot be acquired will not be assessed. To generate or acquire knowledge, all three mechanisms must be functioning at the same time and with the same objective."
Comment: This article details the process of what we call knowledge. What happens "outside" of us (the world we experience with our senses) is complex...but the truly incredible happens internally...(acquire, assess, integrate), and is further complicated by the fact that "Our recognition of information depends on our context and circumstances". This is one of the greatest values of blogging. When I read a newspaper article, I may skim it and not realize implications. Online, I read an article and I do the same...but then another blogger links to it...and I'm brought back to the acquire/assess stage - basically I'm forced to re-evaluate my previous decision to discard it as unimportant. Often, given this new perspective, I see value that was previously hidden. So, the concept that Stephen presents appears to allow others to "speak into" our personal, context-sensitive process of knowledge building.
OntoWeb Edu via Dave Beckett
Quote: "Our task is ultimately to manage, co-ordinate and initiate educational initiatives related to web standardisation activities and to topics related to the Semantic Web in general. In addition, we will also provide a set of online technologies to support publication, retrieval and debate of pedagogic material related to the semantic web."
Comment: An excellent resource! Falls into the "you could get lost in here for days" category. See also OntoWeb (another site done with Plone...I'm seeing these more often)
How Google Grows...and Grows...and Grows
Quote: "... Its performance is the envy of executives and engineers around the world ... For techno-evangelists, Google is a marvel of Web brilliance ... For Wall Street, it may be the IPO that changes everything ( again ) ... But Google is also a case study in savvy management -- a company filled with cutting-edge ideas, rigorous accountability, and relentless attention to detail ... Here's a search for the growth secrets of one of the world's most exciting young companies -- a company from which every company can learn."
Comment: A very intriguing article revealing a company that understands its users...and its purpose for existing (though some question if they are losing focus with the acquisition of Blogger). Some of Google's "rules" (form the article author's perspective): High tolerance for failure, freedom to experiment, user focus, ability for employees to manage themselves...
Internet Search Skills: Tutorials and Courses
Quote: "Using the Internet is easy, isn't it? All you have to do is type the query where it says 'search', and press the button - so why would you need a tutorial or a course? Many users seem to get by with no extra help whatsoever, and that's OK if their requirements are met.
If you want to go further then take a look at this week's newsletter. "
Comment: Very useful edition of wwwtools...covers library research, tutorials, collections, tips and resources.
New Social Network Mapping tools
Comment: An addition to the post yesterday on SNA...this time Roland lists a variety of tools for visualizing social networks. I'm not quite sure how the concept of SNA fits into elearning (the role of SNA in organizations as a whole is very evident)...but I can imagine a simple add on to online learning courses that creates diagrams of the interaction that has occured between various learners (and as a result reveals correlation between interaction and learner performance). I believe I saw something like this several months ago (can't remember where)...
It'll really get interesting once we can transfer this concept to include not just visualization of learner interaction in a course, but the extended range of informal learning. It'll make it much easier to detail who we have to talk to in order to get to the heart of a particular subject matter...it'll save much of the fumbling around I currently do...:)
Weblogs and passion
Quote: "Organizations have recognized that knowledge is an essential part of the value that they create. Knowledge management efforts on the other hand have largely been a disappointment because they have tried to force knowledge into a product metaphor; trying to force what is fundamentally a product of craft into an industrial model of reusable parts."
Comment: Nice statement that really gets at the heart of the reason why many complex endeavors fail: wrong tool for the task...or an idea mismatched for the climate.
Technical trends bode well for KM
Quote: "The challenge was and is to make more of the routine communication flowing through the enterprise available - for data mining, social network analysis, and general awareness. What's obviously good for the enterprise, however, is not so obviously good for the individual, and therein lies the rub. Knowledge is power, and many people are (not surprisingly) reluctant to share that power. Somehow we've got to engineer environments in which the sharing of knowledge feels like an empowering behavior. There's no silver-bullet solution, but current technological and cultural trends provide clues that point toward a brighter future for KM (knowledge management)."
Comment: Blogging (k-logging) as a KM strategy, email mining, social network analysis...these are all tools being explored by organizations in an attempt to capture the value inherent in organizational conversation. The poblem is, knowledge sharing is often created as a strategy that adds value to the organization...this seems to be the wrong way to start. Start with the employee - what do they need? What do the get from sharing? How intuitive are the tools? The benefits will only come to the organization...after the poeple who need to share are getting their own benefits.
Who Loves Ya, Baby?
Quote: "In his classic novel Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut explains how the world is divided into two types of social organizations: the karass and the granfalloon. A karass is a spontaneously forming group, joined by unpredictable links, that actually gets stuff done- as Vonnegut describes it, "a team that do[es] God's Will without ever discovering what they are doing." A granfalloon, on the other hand, is a "false karass," a bureaucratic structure that looks like a team but is "meaningless in terms of the ways God gets things done." "
Comment: This excellent article, via Seb and Ross Mayfield, explores the world of social network analysis (SNA). SNA basically creates a visual image of the social networks within an organization. The formal organizational structure (org chart) is typically not reflective of how work and innovation occurs. The informal connections - people from various departments who dialogue and share information - are the ones that drive new ideas and "make things happen". By analyzing these social connections (can be done via email monitoring, surveys), organizations can harness (and hopefully foster) the connections that lead to results.
For an interesting exploration of SNA, see orgnet.com (links on the bottom of the page are particularly interesting).
Education is sometimes so complex, the learner gets lost in the shuffle. Budgets, politics, limited resources, administrative tasks (i.e. the activities an instructor needs to do, but don't directly impact the learner), etc.
End result: the urgent overshadows the important. It's necessary, therefore, that the reality of teaching is a focus during the design process. Understanding that numerous priorities compete for teacher/learner time, learner-focus needs to be "built-in" to courses, rather than expecting it will magically happen as a result of skilled facilitating (online or classroom).
Some traits of designing a learner-centered online course:
LMS Roulette
Comment: Interesting discussion on LC Blog on a wide variety of topics: LMS, ERP, LCMS, content providers, etc. The heart of the question: what role will LMS play in elearning in the future? Will they be a subset of larger enterprise systems? Will they continue to exist on their own? As one participant stated: vendors are realizing that LMS are not the do all and end all of elearning. Now, if educators would come to a similar realization...:)
Generalists and specialists
Quote: "Never before has the barrier to sharing and accessing information across disciplines been so low, and as a consequence, fields like social network analysis have become reinvigorated. The falling cost of information processing has also increased the amount of quantified analysis in every field. Most social sciences are rapidly converging with economics and even hard sciences. Educational programs stem from research and the definition of fields of study, offering more inter-disciplinary educational paths."
Comment: I agree...barriers for sharing information have never been lower...and yet, it seems, the possibility of controlling information flow (i.e. closed content in education) have never been greater.
CSS2 Tutorial
Comment: In-depth tutorial on CSS2. I skimmed the site...lots of great stuff.
XML in Higher Education
Quote: "SMIL's ability to dynamically assemble multimedia represents a departure from the standard "top-down" approach to authoring adopted by many multimedia presentation packages. Because SMIL describes how individual multimedia "chunks" are assembled, SMIL opens the door to collaborative project development, encouraging an exploratory approach to content creation. With SMIL, authors can update presentation content without the overhead of expensive and elaborate post-production processing. If an error is found in any multimedia component, only that one component needs to be corrected, rather than the entire presentation."
Blogs and Academics via Seb's Open Research
Quote: "Blogs have emerged in academics as both an object of study and a tool for the classroom or personal reflections on teaching. These links sample both these kinds of blogs in an attempt to give a snapshot of blogs and academics."
Comment: Wow! It's like opening a whole new door of links and blogs!...I'll have to spend some time adding link to my aggregator. On a side note, I'm looking for a few blogs on the following (I'd appreciate any links): sociology, learning theory, social networks. It seems like technology related blogs are fairly common...but blogs that focus less on technology are harder to locate...
Expanding the Approaches to User Experience
Quote: "I'm looking beyond the web to a model that handles a broader context, including software, interactive CD-ROMs (for those who remember them from the early 1990s), video games, and other interactive products. But even within the web alone, ignoring the "experiential" elements of user experience seems to be a serious omission."
Comment: Extends and updates Jesse James Garrett's model "The Elements of the User Experience"
Blogging goes mainstream
Quote: "But as more people have embraced the concept, what once seemed like a passing fancy has morphed into a cutting-edge phenomenon that may provide the platform for the Internet's next wave of innovation and moneymaking opportunities."
Comment: Nothing new here in terms of information, it's all been said before. However, the source (CNN) will introduce the concept to a broader audience. At the end of the article, the focus turns to making money off the medium. Why does everything have to be utilitarian? Can't something just be?
Knowledge Sharing
Quote: "Sharing knowledge does not lessen your store, often it gets you more. Sharing plays a key role in relationships and bonding, happens in small steps and is assisted through community membership."
Comment: This wiki page lists multiple forms of knowledge sharing (meeting notes, concept mapping, networking, dialoguing, etc.). When I discuss wikis/blogs/collaborative spaces with others, I often get the "why would anyone do that" comment (in reference to why people contribute to a wiki or write a blog). Personally, it's to clarify things for myself...and to contribute to the larger community that has contributed greatly to my understanding of technology and education. Others, still focused on the mindset of scarcity (i.e. witholding information is power) are genuinely perplexed at the evolution of blogs (and now wikis). It doesn't make sense from the outside...but once you're "in it", sharing, dialoguing, and exploring ideas with dozens of people (from around the world) it starts to make sense...
Last week, I posted an article on the history of the free and open source movements. I proposed a similar model for educational content.
I have posted the proposed model on elearnspace: Developing Open Source Content.
If you find value in the concept, a list has been established on Yahoo!: Open Source Content. In this forum, we'll refine and validate the basic premise and function of open source content in education.
Please forward the link to the list to anyone you feel might be interested...membership is open.
Fellow bloggers: I'd welcome (and appreciate) links to the article and/or the mailing list.
Let the idea live or die based on its merits...
The horror of blimps via McGee's Musings
Comment: This has absolutely nothing to do with elearning...but I laughed so hard I'm still having stomach cramps. It's a must read!
Sony CEO - Micropayments
Quote: "The music industry has been spoiled. They have controlled the distribution of music by producing CDs, and thereby have also protected their profits. So they have resisted Internet distribution. Six years ago I asked Sony Music to start working with IBM to figure out how to offer secured distribution of their content over the Net. But nobody in Sony Music would listen. Then about six months ago, they started to panic. They have to change their mindset away from selling albums, and think about selling singles over the Internet for as cheap as possible-even 20 cents or 10 cents-and encourage file-sharing so they can also get micro-payments for these files. The music industry has to re-invent itself, we can no longer control distribution they way we used to."
Comment: Someone who gets the fundamental shift in business models on the Internet. When organizations (like Sony) stop focusing on threats and start looking at opportunities to serve the needs of a new market, many of the current challenges of music over the Internet, file sharing, etc. will disappear.
Simplicity
Comment: 10 points on the value of simplicity...the least-practiced, most-needed characteristic of education and technology
RSS in Government via Roland Tanglao
Quote: "News about how RSS is being used in federal, state, and local government."
What are the differences between a vocabulary, a taxonomy, a thesaurus, an ontology, and a meta-model? via various
Comment: Short discussion post defining common terms relating to classification/organization.
World of Ends
Quote: "What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else."
Comment: An interesting read about the characteristics of the Internet...and how people keep making mistakes on how to use it, by not understanding what it is. Three "virtues" of the Internet:
RSS for syndicating information about learning objects
Quote: "The net is evolving too fast for manual reviews. Individuals maintaining collections of links will be buried under their own weight (consider the nearly impossible task of verifying links once you have more than a handful).
A more net-like model is using available internet communication protocols for "publishing" abstracts of web site content so others can "subscribe" and "aggregate" dynamic feeds from multiple sources. The technology is RSS (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication)."
Hot Off Your News Clicking Service
Quote: "But I have been testing a promising new breed of software that is helping me on the daily news hunt. Called "news readers," these programs fetch headlines and site summaries from hundreds of Web sites I preselect and present all the information in one spot on my computer desktop. They are a more dynamic, powerful version of the digital newspapers that first appeared online in the mid-1990s and eventually took hold at portals, allowing you to create your own personal Web page."
Comment: Information overload is a problem for most people. We need to change the way in which we handle and use information...because the overload isn't going away. RSS is a great way to keep current with a wide range of news and information. If you're not using a newsreader, download a free version (there are several listed on the right-hand side of this article)...you'll be glad you did...:)
5 Layers of Content
Comment: Details various components of content:
Worlds apart: the difference between intranets and websites
Quote: "Beyond a common use of HTML, intranets and corporate websites (internet sites) are very different animals.
The needs they meet, the content they contain, and the users that access them are all very distinct.
These differences need to be understood by site designers, and reflected both in the design process and the final product.
This article summarises some of the key differences between intranets and websites."
Google and Branding
Quote: "The user experience, customer experience, searcher experience, whatever you want to call it - Google knows that online, the brand is the EXPERIENCE. Good experience, good brand. Bad experience, out of business. "
Comment: Short article on how Google became known as "brand of the year" (ahead of Coke)...by focusing on the core of its business. Lessons for educators?
Noel M. Tichy: The Thought Leader Interview
Quote: "Mr. Welch's insight, which was not widely shared in business at the time, was that leadership was not the province solely of the CEO and his or her senior executive team, but had to be institutionalized throughout the company. A globalizing economy meant that a business world long characterized by stability, autocracy, and strictly bounded processes would have to become more change-embracing, which would require the development of nimble, adaptable leaders up and down company hierarchies. That, in turn, meant building the capacity for teaching men and women not only how to manage change, but how to create it."
Comment: Global pressures facing businesses over the last decade are now confronting education institutions. The lesson from business: Adapt...or become obsolete.
20 Questions via Kairosnews
Comment: Neat. Try it out...kind of eerie... my first item took the bot 24 questions, the second took the bot 16 questions to guess.
The Standard Bearers Close Ranks
Quote: "For most educators, the various eLearning specifications and standards organizations seem far removed from the classroom. Certainly, many have heard of IMS, OKI, and ADL SCORM. However, most would have difficulty explaining how any of these key specifications might affect their online teaching. The reality is that several groups are producing specifications that will affect the way technology is used in online education."
Comment: What's needed is simple standards. Period. Right now, standard bodies are creating massively complex standards that are incomprehensible to the people who are supposed to adopt them - instructors/designers. There's a significant disconnect here.
Ed-blogs
Jay lists an extensive series of blogs related to elearning. Lots of great resources.
10 Damaging E-learning Myths
Quote: "However, this article presents 10 damaging myths that we feel are contributing to the problems facing our industry. These myths seem to be spreading at an infectious pace."
Comment: Short overview of current perceptions of elearning that need changing. These points focus on tweaking existing views...but I believe we need a wholesale shift. Obviously in will happen in small stages...but the whole notion of courses, integration of work/learning, prior learning, etc. all need to be recreated in a truly effective learning model. What's needed is a new perspective of what it is to work/learn...rather than just focusing on elearning. Learning is still being kept in the classroom/course...we have yet to design effective means of integrating KM/elearning/EPSS. With that said...it's a good article, and certainly moves the focus a step closer to what is truly needded.
Building Communities with Software
Quote: "The social scientist Ray Oldenburg talks about how humans need a third place, besides work and home, to meet with friends, have a beer, discuss the events of the day, and enjoy some human interaction."
Comment: An interesting exploration of the significant role of design: "Small software implementation details result in big differences in the way the community develops, behaves, and feels." Discussion forums are discussed at length...and the conclusion is they generally suck...and I agree. Online courses are heavily reliant on discussion forums - often, they are the main source of student interaction with each other. They are, however, poorly designed - it's difficult to keep track of thoughts...repetition is a concern...and sometimes you have to wade through a lot of posts to get to important issues.
I've posted a new article on elearnspace: Free and Open Source Movements - Part 1. This is basically an introductory article exploring the how's and why's of Free/Open Source movement. Later this week, I'll release Part 2...which will focus on the need for (and announce the formation of) an organization committed to fostering open source content in education. As always, feedback is appreciated (coveted).
Digital Game-Based Education via EdTechDev
Comment: Extensive links on game-based learning
The National Learning Infrastructure Initiative: An Interview
Quote: "Current support structures and practices, as well as faculty expectations regarding the form and individualized nature of that support, are largely based on the requirements of the faculty pioneers in online course design. The pioneers tended to redesign entire courses themselves, and they often had the advantage of one-on-one assistance from technical experts in the information technology organization. However, such support methods do not scale, and they are not sustainable when they must be directed at the majority of faculty on a campus."
Comment: Very true. Current higher education directions in moving resources online (specially funded, complex projects) are not sustainable. Most institutions have hundreds/thousands of courses. Moving all of these online via current approaches is just not practical. The solution offered: learning objects...and while I agree, I think, the content of courses in higher education in the future will be provided by for-profit entities.
I'm currently taking an online course which was developed by a textbook publisher, and the instructor basically loaded it into WebCT. No development time. Risk: current public repositories may be overtaken by profit-seeking corporations...and the sharing of learning objects becomes a financial strategy...not an instruction strategy.
Swarm Intelligence: An Interview with Eric Bonabeau
Quote: "Human beings suffer from a "centralized mindset"; they would like to assign the coordination of activities to a central command. But the way social insects form highways and other amazing structures such as bridges, chains, nests (by the way, African fungus-growing termites have invented air conditioning) and can perform complex tasks (nest building, defense, cleaning, brood care, foraging, etc) is very different: they self-organize through direct and indirect interactions."
Comment: Interesting ideas in this interview...the most critical being: the world is becoming so complex, existing structures of centralized understanding are not fully adequate. The solution from the insect world: swarm intelligence. Definition: Swarm Intelligence (SI) is the property of a system whereby the collective behaviours of (unsophisticated) agents interacting locally with their environment cause coherent functional global patterns to emerge.
Study: Content Management Tools Fail
Quote: "The report found the bulk of companies surveyed felt they overspent on content management platforms, and the tools in those platforms are under-deployed. Sixty-one percent of the surveyed companies said they still rely on manual processes to update their Web sites."
Truth and Story via McGee's Musings
Quote: "STORY replied, "Of course they all reject you, "STORY looked at TRUTH, eyes a bit lowered to the side. "No-one wants to look at the naked truth.""
Comment: Few things are more memorable and effective than a story. Resistance to "raw philosophies" can often be overcome through a well-crafted stories/parable. Unfortunately, in mainstream learning, our use of stories is anemic...a fault that appears to be translating into elearning.