Ray Ozzie: Perspective "For the last few decades, I've been trying to help improve work with communication tools. There are many stories of how the new technology is deployed -- and fails. This is not an area where you can just put technology and tools up and have it accomplish what you have in mind. That's because it involves people and organizations. When you instill new processes and practices where there are people are involved and egos are at stake, you need to have a feedback loop and change the tool based on what is working. In such a chaotic environment, it's best to learn from your successes rather than looking at what doesn't work."
Decentralization: "Decentralization is the next stage in a progression of human organization that's been going on for thousands of years."
If we aren't able to succintly express complex concepts of elearning and knowledge managment, we're doomed. I'm curious if this makes sense to any normal human being on the planet (or only to self-proclaimed "knowledge workers" :) Personal Knowledge Management: "Personal Knowledge Management (PKM), the set of processes a knowledge worker needs to set up in order to get the best out of his knowledge during his/her daily activities, has often been considered as the missing block in most KM plans within knowledge intensive organisations..."
Social Issues Surround Social Software: "We created tools to match our technological desires. … For years, I've been thinking that we need to create tools more adapt to the way groups work."
I just finished exploring this 123 slide .pdf presentation on diploma mills. Fascinating for two reasons: 1) how an average human being with Google can become an amateur detective, 2) how the world of diploma mills operate (and how the simple PhD designation can move people into positions they are grossly unqualified to hold).
Whither the Semantic Web: "What's going wrong, it seems to me, is that the developers of the Semantic Web have lost any sense of the idea that these technologies must be used by millions of users, and that for this to happen, the technologies must be (a) capable of being understood by millions of people, and (b) easily implemented by these same people."
Q&A With MIT's Nicholas Negroponte: "Peer-to-peer is key. I mean that in every form conceivable: cell phones without towers, sharing leftover food, bartering, etc. Furthermore, you will see micro-wireless networks, where everyday devices become routers of messages that have nothing to do with themselves."
Of course, this perspective is completely valid, but I prefer to view blogs as an efficient knowledge flow tool (with our without commercial benefit): Blogging With The Boss's Blessing - "In an era of fragmented media, with companies struggling to get their message out any which way, blogs are becoming a kind of undercover megaphone. One way to think of them is as the latest guerrilla marketing tool, a new kind of brand bait."
E-portfolio Demos: "The following is a list of e-portfolio systems that allow you to go in and try out a demo account."
Replace any mention of "web site" in this article with elearning...and it fits quite nicely: An Introduction to Information Architecture "Information architecture is all about looking at the big picture, then breaking it down into manageable bits of information for your users."
A compilation of several hundred software tools for education, communication, development, and productivity: Free Software Portal
Eduforge has been up since January 2004, but it's still a bit sparce on resources. Worth keeping an eye on: "Eduforge is an open access collaborative learning and exploratory environment designed for the sharing of ideas, research outcomes, open source educational software, and tools within a community of educators, researchers and developers."
Storytelling is one of the best learning tools available. Unfortunately, most online learning is "anti-storytelling". Courses are often linear, facts-based transfer of knowledge (teacher to student). In storytelling, there is a oneness between the teacher, learner, and content. It's dynamic, adjusting to changes in any of the three elements.
The technologies available to educators today are ideally suited for knowledge sharing via stories - blogs, wikis, simulations, forums, collaborative spaces, etc - we have an array of social tools available. My interest in social networking stems from its effectiveness as a storytelling process and medium - i.e. the ability to create shared experiences and connect speaker, listener and content. Here's a simple set of 12 principles of storytelling that provides some helpful suggestions.
Over the last four years of blogging, I've developed a personal list of blogs and resources that I follow daily. What started out as primarily an elearning forum has evolved to include knowledge management, communities, technology and social trends, networks, etc.
Over the last while, I'm getting the urge to expand my information network. I still very much value the wisdom of "old friends", but desire to expand my existing thought/idea architecture.
So, which blogs and information sources do you find most valuable in your daily reading? I've opened the comment forum on this post (feel free to introduce your own blog!).
A short article that just scratches the circle in the impending blending of social network analysis, knowledge management, and learning: Who Knows?: "What would you think of an assembly line where workers didn’t know where to find the parts they were supposed to attach? Absurd, you say. Heads would roll. Yet for knowledge workers, this is routine. Consider a knowledge worker stymied by a lack of information—hardly an uncommon situation. In fact, in many professions, knowledge workers spend a third of their time looking for answers and helping their colleagues do the same."
Online learning has a reputation of high drop out rates. This article (.pdf) explores the concept of dropouts, and uses three broad categories to detail variables impacting student success: personal, institutional, and circumstantial. "This article introduces a comprehensive model to assist institutions in planning for interventions to address student dropout and to increase student retention."
More of an indictment of organization/structural failure than on the concept of elearning...but still an interesting read: 'Shameful waste' on e-university
James Farmer is on a wiki run: What do I want in a wiki?, choosing a wiki, and more wikis. Good resources to bookmark.
Nice series of graphics depicting the creation of communities and peer filtering: Weblog networks as social ecosystems
Coworking Institute...a site on collaboration, tools, best practices, and social processes. The links section offers detailed exploration of elearning, virtual communities, coworking, etc. Good resource site.
Technologies Reach Across Campus, State—and World "As collaboration technologies advance and as software companies release new collaborative products, innovative schools will continue to take advantage, often in surprising ways. Because working together is so innate to how people teach and learn, collaboration on campus sometimes takes place without much notice."
Comment: Part of my resistance to large LMS implementations is the structured, one way flow of information (and the fact that they are largely tools intended to help educators organize learners and learning content). For the last several years, the "fringe tools" of blogs, wikis, and other collaborative tools reveal a more learner-friendly approach to learning. Given an LMS and a blog, I would favor a blog as a better tool for dialogue and learning. LMS vendors are starting to understand the need for collaborative tools, and are offering options for dialogue - from synchronous tools to shared work spaces. Only problem is that the instructor still largely controls/creates the dialogue space. Learning is more serendipitous and chaotic. Give learners a voice and a space to explore, and they'll always exceed canned learning objectives.
How to use weblogs to create engaging learning experiences: "Apart from being very easy to use, I feel that there are three key attributes that have contributed to its success: 1) personal point of view, 2) chronological nature and 3) byte-sized posts. Together, these three attributes help create experiences that are both engaging and memorable."
Stephen Downes is repositioning himself from edu-tech guru to RSS missionary :)...RSS: Grassroots Support Leads to Mass Appeal: "To be sure, RSS will evolve rapidly over the next few years. It’s poised to be exposed to a great deal of rhetoric, and is on the verge of being widely commercialized, with the inevitable cycle of hype and disappointment that will follow. That said, RSS is a technology with a strong future, strong because of its simplicity, flexibility, and utility."
Kevin Kruse has put together an elearning dashboard. He lists elearning news, stock prices, upcoming events and blogs. Stop by and have a look...
For all the effort given to the transportation of physical things...we really don't have much of a clue on how knowledge flows in an apparent knowledge economy. Knowledge flow analysis (or some derivative of the concept) is quickly becoming a strategic consideration for corporations. Knowledge flows much like water - not where you want it to...but rather where the conditions are right for natural flow and dispersion (how can you tell I'm trying to grow a $!?# lawn?). As this article states, organization charts do not accurately reveal how information flows. "Whether as a manager presiding over a department or as a member embedded within one, we are all dramatically affected by information flow and webs of relationships within social networks. These networks often are not depicted on any formal chart..."
The Evolving Community of Practice - this presentation begins by discussing the origins of communities of practice (CoPs), moves to features, roles of CoPs within organizations, and stages of development. CoPs have been growing in popularity for several years...and the concept seems to be close to hitting main stream awareness. Organizations are beginning to realize that the most effective means to stay relevant and current in a networked economy is to create a networked learning/knowledge sharing structure. Courses for learning, top-down knowledge flow, gurus in silos - these concepts don't meet our knowledge needs in all situations. A more diversified model incorporates those ideas...and extends them by enhancing connections, relationships, and spaces for collaboration/dialogue.
Who Needs Multimedia discusses some of the myths surrounding media use for elearning. I think the focus is off. The real question of media use is not "is the technology sufficiently advanced", but "does it help the learner and improve the learning experience". If it doesn't add to the learning experience, don't use it...doesn't matter how "cool" or cutting edge it is. I've come to view the deselection of formats/concepts/activities in the learning design process as (almost) more important than the formats/concepts/activities that are included.
Ideas from the Fringe: "...some of the best ideas come from the people on the fringes of organizations: the new hires, the temporary workers, the third-shifters, the interns, the retirees etc. The reason is that they see the company from a different perspective than those who work there every day. And perspective has a lot to do with a person's ability to come up with ideas."
Emergic offers a great resource list on various types of blog software "This chart displays attributes of different user-installed blog software packages side-by-side for comparison."