Welcome to Digital Games for Online Learning Community
Quote: "Here's a community where you can meet other educators and trainers who are interested in using games to enhance learning. It's a place to share ideas, experiences, resources and best practices."
Comment: Nice idea. Too bad RSS feeds weren't added.
If you've been following the ramp up to the American presidential elections, you've heard of Howard Dean...a candidate whose campaign is based on grassroots activism (whatever that means!). He recently released the software behind his campaign communities under GPL: Community Site.
Humour me with these thoughts:
Courses are artifacts of a learning model that is becoming obsolete. Courses work in an environment when knowledge/information is fairly static and developing slowly. The more rapidly information develops, the more quickly courses cease to serve the needs of learners. The information is outdated before the ink is dry.
I've previously discussed CoPs (communities of practice) (an example of a learning community) as an alternative to courses (CoPs are one part - other components include searchable archives, tools for dialogue/debate, access to gurus, forum for self-expression/reflection, etc.). These learning communities allow us to become knowledgeable in a specific area of interest...much like courses teach one specific subject matter.
Most of us belong to more than one learning community. These multiple communities form a personal learning network. If a learning community equates somewhat with a course, then our learning network is equivalent to a degree program. Each community is a node on the network.
Basically, a node is an interface/connection point to a larger network. In terms of computers, a network is the connection of two or more computers in order to share resources. As such, a learning network can be defined as the connection of learning communities with the intent of sharing experiences/resources (cross-pollination...serendipity)...and our ultimate self-defined goal of competency/knowledge (much like a degree is the final intent of a program in higher education)...i.e. we define what we want/need to know...and we sculpt our network to achieve these goals.
A few thoughts on learning networks:
Taking XML's measure: "Many people in chief information officer and chief technology officer roles would share the perception that the enterprise world in general is not doing a good enough job in getting value out of the large inventory of information that's built up."
A testament to the growing importance of mobile content (and by extension, m-learning): Microsoft renames mobile content delivery unit
In search of tech serendipity : "Why is serendipity such a rare commodity? "The fundamental problem is that technologists know nothing about markets, and markets know nothing about the technologies," MacMillan says. "It is like a black hole. It is very hard to see behind your experience space." "
What high tech can learn from low tech
Quote "High-tech companies have always focused on product innovation, and the economics of producing and selling technology in a high-demand environment enabled them to increase the value of their output for a given amount of labor, capital, and purchased goods and services. Now they must put a similar effort into delivering the same or greater output with fewer inputs and developing innovative operational processes, not just products and services."
Comment: An excellent point made in this article: innovation needs to happen without the addition of significant external resources...rather through effective utilization of existing resources. Higher education (and many corporate training departments) will not be a long term player in the online learning market without this realization. Too many online projects are "special initiatives". If it costs us $10 000 to move a course online, how will an entire institution be able to move all of its programs online (with hundreds of courses)?
We need to move resources online as we go about developing our regular classroom resources. The problem with technology integration is that we first separate it from learning...and then complain that we are having difficulty with integration. Blended learning is the abused term of this year, but it has value...develop and build online and classroom simultaneously by attending to the strengths of each for the intended learning task. The unique constraints of one will strengthen the other.
Corporate memory - the hard way
Quote: "Many dollars have been invested, many organizations have egg on their collective faces, many repositories lie unused, shunned by novices and experts alike and yet there are more KM projects starting each day with the same vision / mission and yet another dream."
Comment: Nice thoughts on why knowledge management is generally not working well. I think one of the biggest problem relates to the lack of clarity on the part of the KM initiators. Why are you starting a project? What do you want to achieve?
A KM strategy that starts at an executive level, and is marketed with executive interests, will have little appeal to the "end user". Much like my concerns with LMS', KM tools are geared to the interests of the wrong group of people.
An LMS is a teacher's tool. What learners need is a learning tool. KM is geared to corporate interests...what employees want is a tool that lets them better perform their work (without intrusive additions to existing routines).
How Will "Smart Mobs" Play Out?:
"Q: What are smart mobs?
A: They're people who use the Internet and the mobile telephone to organize collective action in the way that the Internet and the personal computer provided -- and to create new industries."
I'm almost at the stage of disabling comments for this blog. Spam has been getting worse weekly. I deleted about 15 comment spam this weekend. Anyone have a solution to this (other than disabling comments)?
Managing Yourself Through Change. Elearning (or technology) adoption has more to do with change than with the new technology tools. This is a nice resource on the change process: status quo, foreign element, chaos, transforming idea, integration, new status quo.
Fear of failure is the greatest limitation to learning. Last year, Stephen Yurkiw published an article on elearnspace titled: Learning With Confidence: Encouraging Risk and Failure in Learning. I'm currently taking a series of online courses that bring to light the wisdom of embracing the prospect of failure during the learning process. If we value ourselves by ability, we most often create comforable environments for ourselves. If we value ourselves by effort we are more likely to try new things (and learning is all about trying new things).
Why is failure so important?
Interesting: Catch a Flick on Flexible E-Paper "Using a process called electrowetting, the scientists claim to be able to manipulate colored oils in the pixels on the page with such speed and accuracy as to be able to generate clear and accurate video displays."
This list highlights just how similar knowledge management and learning are (and I imagine they'll continue moving in this direction until they are virtually identical): Thinking of KM Tools
Short article: Selling Your Elearning Initiative...the suggestions are basic (Get the attention, persuade, handle objections and quell arguments early), but I'm surprised at how little effort is generally given to promoting elearning within an organization after it has been developed.
Designing Effective Step-By-Step Assembly Instructions (Jim McGee). This is a neat resource. The page links to a .pdf file (and video) on how to create assembly instructions for common products (furniture, toys, etc.). I'm not the most mechanically inclined person around...but proper documentation makes it much easier for me to assemble products. While this article is technical, lessons can be gleaned for designing learning.
Schools tackle PDA problem. Student adoption of technology is out-pacing instructor/organizational adoption. This article looks at the issues of text messaging, cell phones, and PDAs in schools. I don't see how it can really be regulated. The best policy listed in the article relates to: "use it as long as it doesn't interfere with the class environment". I have a similar policy...but I have noticed (generalization) that students most involved in texting also produce lower quality work...
Dialing the future at Dartmouth : "Now, the college is venturing into the world of "voice over Internet protocol," also known as VoIP, which essentially turns a computer into a telephone...The introduction of voice over Internet protocol is closely coupled with Dartmouth's recent decision to stop charging students, faculty and staff for long-distance phone calls...In a year or so, Levine said, the college will offer a similar service with video. "It all ultimately relates back to this idea of convergence where anything you see or hear can be digitized""
IA Tools Initiative (Column Two). Information architecture and elearning design have much in common. This site offers some nice templates that could transition nicely for elearning use.
Jay Cross blogs VNU Supplier Summit...information, stats on LMS, simulations, future of technology, and more.
The Internet Reborn: "Still, despite its enormous impact, today's Internet is like a 1973 Buick refitted with air bags and emissions controls."
Interesting thoughts on how we use email and how to make it more effective:Apres Spam
New to teaching online? Consider this resource via Ray: Distance Learning: Step by Step (.pdf)...covers many areas of consideration for the online environment (including assessment and issues in moving to online).
Update: James Farmer's opinion: "Don't even go near this paper unless you'd like to get thoroughly disenchanted with the way online education is being put out there."
A series of thoughts on knowledge management: KM: what's in it for me?. Worth reflecting on: "Social networking on the internet is beyond the communities of practice phenomenon, since the former is initiated and driven by the individual, and the opportunities for networking are more flexible, dynamic and fluid than communities of practice."
Remote Participation in Inquiry Learning: "Many of the Information and Communication Technology tools developed over the last decade or so were initially picked up and put to good use by teachers in Distance Education - however, as the distinctions between this and other sectors have tended to blur, the tools used to facilitate remote observation and participation have been adapted to the task of delivering learning across the entire spectrum of educational endeavour."
The Business Value of Web Standards (via elearningpost): "But industry accolades aside, how important is standardization to an individual business like ours? Do Web standards give organizations a return on investment?"
Do Yourself a Favor and Stop Learning: " I'm about to admit something odd, and perhaps career-threatening: I'm sick of learning."
Previously, I've stated that mobile phones will become the centerpiece of the mobile economy. Here's a short post with statistics supporting that viewApproaching the Mobile Internet: "Look at PDA shipments in 2002: just over 12 million in total. Compare this to mobile phone shipments, which were just shy of 105 million in a single quarter last year. PDA sales are just 2.8% of mobile phone sales. If your idea of mobile revolves around PDAs, you are ignoring the other 98% of your audience." (via PaidContent)
I frequently link to discussions on digital media and the role and value of content in a digital culture. In case you wonder how it relates to elearning... how things play out on the media, entertainment, news, etc. level is how things will play out for educational content. Discussions of microcontent, open content, value creation in the content cycle will be driven by the model created in other forums. On that note, here's a link detailing the angst of traditional content creators: Debating digital media's future
I came across this site in an XML course I'm currently taking (and Gadgetopia): css Zen Garden. Click on any of the design changes on the right-hand side of the screen. A great example of what's possible when separating content from presentation. In this case, the style sheet is creating a completely new look, even though the content is unchanged.
Thirty-two Trends Affecting Distance Education (via Stephen (again)): "This article provides decision makers with 32 trends that affect distance learning and thus enable them to plan accordingly. The trends are organized into categories as they pertain to students and enrollment, faculty members, academics, technology, the economy, and distance learning."
When Books Break the Bank (via Stephen): "In the past two decades, the price of textbooks has soared. The price of educational books and supplies has risen 238 percent...But more and more, students are fighting back, finding ways to reduce the costs. They are sharing books, using library copies or going online to find cheap used copies."
The Weakening of Strong Ties
Quote: "The difference between a strong tie and weak tie can generally be revealed by time commitment underpinning the relationship. Strong ties are better for action, weak ties for new information."
The continuing pressure transforming how we acquire content (of any kind): Is Blockbuster doomed?
I've linked to the excellent collaborative book before, but don't think I've listed Martin's Collaborative Learning blog. All that's needed is an RSS feed...
Social Impact Games: "The goal of this site is to catalog the growing number of video and computer games whose primary purpose is something other than to entertain."
An excellent resource...RSS feeds listed by topic. Much potential. EDU_RSS. As Stephen says: "if we can do this for RSS feeds, we can do it even more easily with learning object metadata..."
E-mail's special power: "An ad-hoc group convened by e-mail dissolves unless membership is reaffirmed by each message. This is a feature, not a bug. Many of the groups that perform work in a modern organization are transient. A hallway conversation is over in minutes; a spontaneous collaboration can last a day; a project may take a week. Software that requires people to explicitly declare the formation of these groups, and to acknowledge their dissolution, is too blunt an instrument for such ephemeral social interaction. Like an operating-system thread, an e-mail thread is a lightweight construct, cheap to set up and tear down."
What is Information Design...discussion on information design...see the links on the bottom of the page as well.
Where do you go when you need to learn/know something? Take a course? Google it? Go to the library? Approach a co-worker? The answer to this question provides much insight into how people are coping with high information levels and high knowledge needs...and how corporations and higher education need to structure their training.
Habits die hard, but my approach to meeting my information needs has really changed in the last several years. I take several formal courses each year, but I usually find my need for knowledge is satisfied in more informal ways. Depending on what I need to learn, here's the process:
How should learning environments be structured? Some thoughts (apply to both physical and digital environments):
The environment in which these spaces are created becomes a community. The community provides the trust, connections, and serendipity to meet knowledge needs and foster innovation that allows for knowledge creation. Knowledge management is only partially about capturing and sharing knowledge. An effective learning environment also creates knowledge.
I would love to see college courses structured to account for this manner of knowledge acquisition. When learning a completely new task, some structure of content is needed. As the learner grows in skill/knowledge, the structure should give way to increased support via forums of exploration and learner self-evaluation (i.e. what do I need to know? Where can I go to find it?). Year One of a new program should somewhat resemble courses (i.e. provide structured exposure to content)...but subsequent years should resemble the way in which knowledge will be acquired once in the workplace. As I've stated before: "Small communities of practice, loosely joined, are the future of effective, lifelong learning..."
The creation of a better learning environment isn't really a difficult task. The tools exist (most with open source versions), the need is evident...the only thing needed is realization of the changing nature of learner needs...and the implementation of a community-focused, feature-rich learning environment (notice I didn't say LMS...:)).
Time to Make Tech Work:"The IT industry is maturing. Hopefully, this maturity will result in a slower introduction of new features, which in turn will let companies focus their attention and resources on making existing technology work better for users."
The current issue of Educause is devoted to knowledge sharing (via Stephen).
Some excellent articles. Note, in particular (.pdf):
A Revolution in Knowledge Sharing
New Models for Online Learning
Share and Share Alike
September/October edition of The Technology Source is available. As always, interesting articles (including Simulations and the Learning Revolution).
Social Currency
Quote: "Like the lunatics responsible for the dot.com boom and bust, these entrepreneurs still don't get it: in an interactive space, content is not king. Contact is."
Comment: In elearning, anything we need to know is available somewhere on the Internet for free...Finding it (making contact) is the challenge. The organization of the content is where value is injected.
Interesting: How we Read. I think much of what we learn/experience is merely about filling in existing blanks...which might be a problem. We think we know what we're encountering, so we reach conclusions without fully understanding. This reading exercise highlights just how effective we are at "filling in blanks".
Open Source a No-Brainer for Developing World...and the education field. I still don't understand why more education institutions don't adopt open source. It's a perfect fit - flexible, lower cost (guess that depends which study you read), great user support, and most importantly - open.
New-Generation Phones Got Game. The excitement surrounding (and innovative applications for) mobile phones is positioning them as the instrument for delivering learning to mobile learners. New mobile phone technologies are announced almost daily. What's a PDA again?
Critiques of Factory Schooling (via Jeremy)...goal of the site is to "provoke, challenge and dismantle factory-schooling and construct and connect new open learning communities". Some articles are a bit intense (most that I skimmed would cause system shock to education today if practiced). One section from an book titled No More Prisons caught my eye: "I didn't want to memorize a bunch of facts and forget them. I wanted to know facts I could use and organize them like an almanac in a way I could whip out on any fool who tried to test me.
I didn't want to speed through assigned texts. I wanted to read some carefully, others not at all.
I didn't want to rush my diary. I wanted to write down everything important and organize it like a bible for instant consultation.
I didn't want to hear about amazing people. I wanted to meet them, apprentice with them, be their partner.
I didn't want to sit in classrooms. I wanted to see the world."
There's a growing gap between how people learn in schools and how they learn at work/real life. Learning today is all about communities and connections. Formal education is still about structure and process.
Many doors for learning will be opened once rich media is more accessible. Robin offers a sampling of a newer technology (but not much technical information is given). Video on the Internet is only partially limited due to bandwidth. Some developers are beginning to create new platforms that are usable even at 56K. More bandwidth is not the only solution to more effective video conferencing. We'll continue to see more options like this... Killer Cross-Platform Videoconferencing Just Around The Corner!
Willful ignorance:
Quote: ""It is my considered opinion, from long experience, that our customers will continue to be reluctant to use information systems - however well designed - so long as one feature of our present intellectual and engineering climate prevails. This feature - and its relevance is all to commonplace in many companies, laboratories, and agencies - is that for many people it is more painful and troublesome to have information than for them not to have it.""
Comment: Valuable insight here for online learning designers/instructors...learners will often only acquire/seek information if it is more painful/troublesome to not have it. Linking motivations and evaluation to objectives and designing interactive activities that don't feel like learning are a start...but part of the problem is with the factory model of education. That's why communities of practice are so effective...we're there to learn and seek information...we want it.
Scott Leslie finds all the neat articles relating to LMS': Open Source LMS (.pdf)
Barnes & Noble drops e-books Sales? Adoption? Inability to create a business model? Competition?
Old-School Administration of Online Learning:
Quote: "What's interesting is that I expect to be treated like a customer. I want immediate, friendly service and learning on my own terms. I expect the administration of my program to be like managing my personal account at Amazon, with instant feedback and the ability to get exactly (and only) what I want. Education has never been set up that way, but the demand for good, flexible service will continue to increase."
Comment: Educational institutions need to know their learners. The experience Jeremy details is far too common. Some institutions just don't get "learner-focused" in practice (though I'm sure it's in their mission statement...).
More thoughts on microcontent (details what the "new model" looks like...and offers a response to Clay Shirky's article posted here earlier this week)Selling Online Content-25 Cents at a Time . This discussion is important for educators. We currently buy our content one texbook at a time. Microcontent allows content to be purchased a page at a time from many texbooks. That potential, however, doesn't alter the real debate: are people willing to pay small fees for Internet content when it may already be freely available elsewhere...
Basic introduction: What's a Wiki (via Gadgetopia)
Models of Collaboration - defines five models: library, solicitation, team, community, process support.
Personalization is important: "Imagine if I operated a store that treated customers the way early eLearning treats learners. You bought an expensive item last week and come back into the store. No one acknowledges you or says hello. No one calls you by name. They're already forgotten you were here before. They have no memory of your purchase. There isn't much merchandise on the shelves and you're not allowed to try anything on before you buy it. We never follow up. You want a personal shopper? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. That's a good one."
Balancing the Learning Equation: Exploring Effective Mixtures of Technology, Teaching, and Learning - the title promises more than the article delivers...but it is a nice sweeping overview of online learning - including stages of "being" online, repositories, resources, and organizations.
I'm skeptical...For Student Essayists, an Automated Grader...but the electronic reader reports a high level of agreement with human readers - 98%. Problem as I see it is the lack of feedback. If evaluation were simply grading, the e-reader might work. But evaluation is instructive. Grading an essay is an opportunity for the teacher to teach...something that e-readers are obviously not able to do.
Fairly neutral, interesting overview of legal issues (think SCO) developing in open source: Is This the End of Linux? (via Windley)
Fubini's Law
"1. People initially use technology to do what they do now - but faster.
2. Then they gradually begin to use technology to do new things.
3. The new things change life-styles and work-styles.
4. The new life-styles and work-styles change society
... and eventually change technology."
Clay Shirky has an interesting article on Fame vs Fortune: Micropayments and Free Content
Quote: "The fact that digital content can be distributed for no additional cost does not explain the huge number of creative people who make their work available for free. After all, they are still investing their time without being paid back. Why?
The answer is simple: creators are not publishers, and putting the power to publish directly into their hands does not make them publishers. It makes them artists with printing presses. This matters because creative people crave attention in a way publishers do not."
Comment: I'm not certain that I agree with the conclusion of the author (that micropayments ("small digital payments of between a quarter and a fraction of a penny") won't succeed). There is a market for value-added content (content is free...but the way it is packaged generates the value - i.e. in the educational market, if learning objects are free...then the designation of an institution, the process of supporting and leading learners through the content, etc. is where value is generated). Someone will always be willing to pay for some type of content...if they see value. If a corporate executive feels that a certain news site provides keen insight into the functioning of the marketplace, she/he will be prepared to pay (even if the content is freely available)...it's the aggregation of content that provides value. As information continues to multiply...and people continue to be overwhelmed, the value of content will not be the content itself, but the filtering of the content. And that's where people will charge...and others will pay.
RFID Chips Everywhere. Nothing to do with elearning...this will play itself out as corporation vs. consumer (i.e. at the social level). Radio frequency identification is an example of a product that has potential uses...and as many potential abuses.
In this forum, I generally don't detail changes/developments relating to elearning vendors/companies. If you're interested in this, I recommend elearning alert: "A weekly Friday morning roundup of news and information about companies and products involved in corporate online training and knowledge management. Designed to be a resource for IT decisionmakers, as well as marketing, public relations and advertising managers in e-Learning companies."
Storage (via Slashdot)
Quote: "Storage is an exciting project to replace the traditional filesystem with a new document store. Storage is part of a larger design for a new desktop environment, more details on that to come. The current implementation offers natural language access, network transparency, and a number of other features."
Comment: File use has two shortcomings (from my perspective):
1. Hierarchical file structures (difficult to manage as number of files and resources increase).
2. Files committed to a particular computer.
The project linked above addresses my first concern. Next, I need a file system that is not committed to one computer (i.e. a drive that is Internet-based and accessible from anywhere). Concepts like IDrive are a start...but they don't go far enough. I want something that is as seemless as working with files sitting on my hard drive.
The State of the E-Learning Market : "The e-learning market doldrums mean some providers are gone-merged, acquired or shuttered. You might yet learn to love the shakeout. If nothing else, picking an e-learning vendor is easier because you have fewer choices. More to the point, survivors are "getting back to fundamentals" and addressing customer business problems..."
Great site: Internet Education Project (via What's Gnu?) - "The Internet Education Project (IEP) is a means to promote and share peer reviewed instructional materials created by librarians to teach people about discovering, accessing and evaluating information in networked environments."
Digital Best Practices: "This site will guide you through major decision points in planning a digital project..."
Rich Media to Outpace Even Online Growth...I linked to a similar study recently...but the end of this article lists expected group for rich/streaming media. About 1 1/2 ago, I ran an online course using streaming video (and chat as a way for students to ask questions) working with Dave Gurney (eTV). The results were very encouraging. Rich/streaming media stimulates learner interest, targets a wider range of learning styles (as compared to text on screen), and, if done properly, can allow for more personable learner/instructor interactions.
We did encounter a few concerns (latency, stream quality - initially), but with some tweaking, things worked well. For streaming to be widely adopted, it needs to move from the "studio model" to a simpler, less expensive "instructor in control model". Certain (more formal) productions will always require a studio...but an instructor with a group of 10 online learners should be able to manage the stream him/herself.
Charting a Course on Learning Management Systems: Quick look at learning management system (LMS) options: buy, open source, build.
Patents close open markets. If a company has invested signifcantly to develop a physical product, patents are important. In this case, patents are stated up front...and everyone knows where things stand (sort of). The company holding the patent is essentially saying, "This product/pill/design is ours, we invested in it, you can't use it."
Online, patent holders wait until their "intellectual property" has gained acceptance (and in some cases has become integral to certain online activities)...and then rights are asserted. Obviously, if the intellectual property is not being used, it has no value. It's like getting broadsided...you think you're building on an open technology...and suddenly it's pulled out from under your feet. Who can innovate in this environment?
Bill Gates sums it up nicely: "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today."
Cost, Value and ROI for Knowledge Management in Law Firms:
Quote: "In my opinion, if you are in a competitive market, knowledge management is like word processing or e-mail - you would be foolish to try to do business without it."
Comment: ROI in knowledge management is extremely difficult to calculate. This article effectively explores possible approaches to determining cost/value/ROI - including intangibles, costing KM, and recovery. Must read.
EdTechPost links to an interesting evaluation of course management systems (.pdf). The article is largely supportive of enterprise-level implementation ("deep integration" - a Latin term meaning "you have no choice but to do it this one way - innovation will be punished" :)).
There's a trade off in deploying enterprise-wide. Pros: more cost effective, centralized support, greater efficiencies when integrated with other systems, may be easier for adoption (one training strategy), likely geared toward the average, not the power user. Cons: Locked into one platform, reduced opportunities to experiment (i.e. hurts innovation), generic - not program specific, centralized control, customization is in someone else's hands (not the department/program level).
I've been using Mozilla for web browsing and email. It's been a very easy switch from Microsoft. Stories like thisare great motivators.
Over the last several weeks, appropriately timed with "back to school", I've encountered several articles on the state of education. The focus is on two levels: education is out of touch with the needs of learners today...and education is increasingly expensive.
The education system needs an overhaul. The issues are: to what degree and on what kind of timeline. A few thoughts from Dave Snowden on innovation: "Some times of innovation are incremental in their nature
and goal driven...That said, there are times when we need breakthrough thinking, something I would term Eureka innovation. In this we gain new
perspective, create a whole new way of looking at the world. Interestingly such breakthroughs rarely arise from a structured process or a "creativity programme" but are a result of maverick behaviour or accident (look at the history of science for examples)....This distinction also helps us understand the role of KM in innovation. For incremental innovation it is about codification and distribution of knowledge and information, making and enabling connections. For Eureka Innovation it is about breaking patterns of thinking, avoiding best practice at all costs and sensitising ourselves to weak signals and new possibilities. We need both, and we need to understand the boundary between them. Practices that work on one side of the boundary will fail on the other."
Public College Tuition Increases Prompt Concern and Legislation (free subscription required): "In the last decade, average tuition at both public and private four-year colleges grew nearly 38 percent, adjusted for inflation."
Three Cultures In Colleges And Universities And Distance Education
Quote: "How can distance education as a post-industrial information-based idea survive in institutions that were created to serve industrialized mass education, with faculty who are rewarded to remain crafts men and women and work in a pre-industrial culture?"
Comment: An excellent question. Unfortunately, the article doesn't provide any real answers on how institutions should go about making the transition.
User Experience and Human Learning (Column Two): "The purpose of information is to organize and communicate valuable data to people, so they can derive increased knowledge that guides their thinking and behaviour. Human learning processes mediate the building of knowledge from meaningful information and integration into one's knowledge base. Therefore, a proper understanding of human learning is important to consider while making design decisions."
How Much Information: "The world produces between 1 and 2 exabytes of unique information per year, which is roughly 250 megabytes for every man, woman, and child on earth."
Interactive Visual Explainers - A Simple Classification: "Visual representations have been used since the dawn of human civilization to communicate - to reveal the hidden, illustrate the intricate, explain the complex and illuminate the obscure.
Constructing visual representation of information is not mere translation of what can be read to what can be seen. It entails filtering the information, establishing relationships, discerning patterns and representing them in a manner that enables a consumer of that information construct meaningful knowledge."