Technology Hype Cycle: "As people start to learn more about the technology, it starts to struggle up the slope of enlightenment. The final stage is the "plateau of productivity" when it becomes mainstream."
Wide Open Spaces: Wikis, Ready or Not...I have been somewhat cynical about the role of wikis in the past. Over the last year, however, I've stated using a wiki to organize personal knoweldge and for small-scale collaboration. I think they have real potential (perhaps more so than blogging, as they are more conducive to collaborative content creation - a concept that will continue to grow in value in educational fields). Brian Lamb's article is a good overview of objections to (and realities of) using wikis.
Educational Blogging - this article is currently receiving a lot of well deserved attention from edubloggers. Great for instructors who are trying to visualize how to integrate this social tool into the learning process.
Jay Cross comments on outsourcing learning...a natural extension of businesses focusing on their core strengths. While Jays focus is more on corporate opportunities to be learning outsource providers, I think there is a real opportunity here for colleges (or higher education in general). It seems odd that more corporations aren't partnering with colleges to handle their education needs (or perhaps it's more appropriate to say that it's odd that colleges haven't seen themselves as players in the learning outsourcing market).
Google is becoming a dominant part of many people's lives (both work and personal). Here's a few links that provide some insight into the company's possible future:
Google's Real Rivals: "Google has an almost insurmountable lead over its search-engine rivals, but will face its stiffest competition from portals like Yahoo and MSN and mega-online retailers such as Amazon.com"
The Google Browser: "It's been obvious for awhile now that Google isn't a search company, nor are they an advertising company, despite what the experts have to say. Sorry to sound like a broken record, but I'm convinced they're building an operating system (of sorts) from which they will dispense all sorts of applications and data (as well as allow other people/companies to do the same in this fashion)."
The G-spot: "...Google’s owners, both public and private, can turn to the real battle ahead—control of the next generation operating system of the network. Just as Microsoft has inexorably expanded the Windows platform to absorb compression, multi-media, the Web, and security from within, Google will expand its search platform to encompass more and more content and data types.
One way to handicap Google is to deconstruct the notion that Google’s intellectual property is bound solely to search. In fact, it’s bound to the emerging platform known as software-as-a-service."
Good advice from Phil Windley: How to Start a Blog
Should we be Using Learning Styles: (.pdf file)...this document evaluates the most popular learning style models, looking at reliability, validity, and impact on pedagogy. Most complete overview of learning styles I've come across...
Free Open Source Software for E-learning - useful links and resources - including LMS, websites, licenses, standards, open courseware, etc.
Open Access: "In the world of academic research the Internet has great potential for increasing collaboration, yet the hardest part has been finding new ways of thinking about how to publish research. The progress that academic institutions have made in thinking about collaboration might be just as instructive for the corporate information-sharing world."
Distributed KM (via Steven): "Improving the productivity of knowledge workers is one of the most important challenges for companies that face the transition from the industrial economy to an economy based on information and knowledge (Drucker, 1999). However, most "knowledge management" efforts have failed to address this problem and focused on information management instead.
This paper briefly explores the failure of traditional knowledge management to adress the problem of knowledge worker productivity and argues that a deeper understanding of knowledge work is necessary to improve it. It then explores knowledge work and how it is supported with information technology tools today, focussing specially on the email client as a knowledge work tool."
A critical softskill (often not focused on during the formal education process) is how to manage personal information. Information Routing touches on an emerging trend (evidenced through sites like furl and bloglines) that allows people to share their information sources through posting opml files, shared topics, shared folders, linksetc. Basically, we route information that we find valuable to others who share our interests. With email as a information sharing model, the knowledge trail disappeared once the recipient receives the email. Tools like blogging leave a firmer trail...but the information enters the vastness of the internet - rarely to be seen again. Shared information tools (i.e. Furl's archives) seek to extend the connections that valuable information offers to people within a similar network. It's still a very new concept...but I suspect the future of information management will rely more and more on trusting the information routing skills of others (it's just getting to complex to do it all ourselves).
Presentation Technology: "Presentation technologies have been incorporated into numerous applications to enhance the classroom experience and develop better communications among scholars and researchers. In this section, we offer numerous articles that highlight the integration of presentation technologies and new media into education environments."
Constructivism, Cognitivism, and Behaviorism: "When do you employ each of these philosophies in your instructional designs? What I like about the question is its pragmatism. It suggests that constructivism, cognitivism, and behaviorism are all perspectives that you try on to achieve specific goals rather than fundamentally correct or incorrect positions about how human beings learn."
The Next Generation of Educational Engagement (via Michelle): "Games are no longer just for fun; they offer potentially powerful learning environments. Today's students have grown up with computer games. In addition, their constant exposure to the Internet and other digital media has shaped how they receive information and how they learn."
Comment: The introduction to this article states that today's students are technologically literate. I disagree. A large percentage of students are comfortable with technology...but a significant percentage are techo-allergic. The generalization that a young person knows computers and digital interfaces is wrong. Anyone trying to teach with technology knows this.
The balance of the article focuses on the popularity of video games and their application to learning. Games are discussed as an informal learning environment that incorporate many attributes of how people learn (uses prior learning, context, feedack, social, experiential). As the author notes, the value of games in learning is obvious...the challenges hinge on development, deployment and acceptance.
Here's an interesting approach (using a blog) to handling elearning design situations: elearning Design Challenge: "Every week or two I’ll try to publish a situation that describes a discrete topic to be taught online. Some topics are just so difficult, dry or abstract that they defy instruction. That’s what the challenge is all about...Then I hope people like you will get involved and offer solutions and suggestions as to the best way to teach the topic online."
I wonder if a wiki might be a better implementation - whenever I think collaborative content creation, I think wiki. Still, the comments on the two challenges I reviewed on the blog are helpful. RSS feed is available.
Online Course Development: What Does It Cost? looks at development costs as a 3 stage cycle: 1. launching online learning, 2. infrastructure and course model development, 3. institutionalizing and refining online learning. According to the author we are still in the second stage (and will be for another 1 - 2 years). I disagree with the central notion posited - use an LMS. There are many options and alternatives. LMS' are most useful for an organization to monitor and track learning and for sequencing content. If that is an organization's primary view of learning, then sure, use an LMS. If, on the other hand, learning is primarily viewed as an informal dialogue, collaborative content creation, or a function of communities, then many effective tools exist. Some examples: Groove, Plone, Skype, SNA tools (like Multiply), Convea, aCollab, etc. IF you want to manage learning, use an LMS. IF you want to foster dialogue/community building, use a collaborative tool. Either option, thoughtfully implemented, can result in cost savings.
A good, fairly comprehensive overview of developing a KM Strategy: "Developing a knowledge management strategy provides a unique opportunity to gain a greater understanding of the way the organisation operates, and the challenges that confront it."
Storytelling in six parts:
In a recent newsletter, Stephen points to Blinkx as an interesting search tool (it searches your computer and the Internet in one sweep). I've spent time playing with it, and it looks like it has potential. Search can be defined on a variety of levels (personal files, email, news, web, products, blogs, or video clips). The results aren't as effective as Google...but the inclusion of personal files/news/blogs in search is a welcomed feature.
Mr. Rogers' New Neighborhood: "Generally, communities of practice start from the ground up, Andre said. They can't come from the top because they don't fit a typical command and control structure. "It is a very informal structure that comes into being out of a need," Andre added." (via Steven)
Blended Learning: "The learning community understands that no single delivery method is appropriate in every circumstance."
Things have been quite on the utility computing front recently, but as this article states, progress is being made (and many companies are beginning to experiment with it on limited levels). One big reservation I have with utility computing is the highly centralized model it creates. Centralization isn't always bad, but in a computing world, it often results in limited options for end users (and increased control for a select few). As the author says: "If utility is to take hold, cultural change will be a key challenge. By its very nature, utility requires centralization and the sharing of resources in a manner that many companies won't recognize. Senior management's job will be to smooth ruffled feathers as departmental servers evaporate into a pool of resources that are controlled by the IT department or outsourced to service providers."
We're All Journalists Now starts off with some provocative suggestions (how technology changes media and people in the process)...but really falls short on delivering anything new and meaningful (one series of questions includes no-brainers like "Do more voices add up to more truth in media? Can you really trust everything you read on an RSS feed?"). Still, the article does capture a bit of the trend of giving information distribution control to the average person through blogs and wikis.
If you're new to RSS and its role in education, have a look at this article: RSS could transform online communication
Decentralized power is THE issue of the new millennium a short, simple discussion on the move from centralization. The examples given cover media, automobile, recording, and medical fields. Essential message is: the end consumer has more control than ever before....and industries that fail to understand this may find their world shrinking under their feet. The field of education isn't listed, but fits well with other examples...it's just a matter of time.
Decentralized Intelligence:: "When organizations fail, our first reaction is typically to fall into "control mode": One person, or at most a small, coherent group of people, should decide what the current goals of the organization are, and everyone else should then efficiently and effectively execute those goals. Intuitively, control mode sounds like nothing so much as common sense. It fits perfectly with our deeply rooted notions of cause and effect ("I order, you deliver"), so it feels good philosophically. It also satisfies our desire to have someone made accountable for everything that happens, so it feels good morally as well."
According to this article, spyware is a bigger problem than viruses for most computer users. The last page of the article lists a variety of free tools to clean up spyware. I've used Ad-aware and Spybot...both work well. Recently, however, I've installed a program called SpywareBlaster which takes a more preemptive approach - it prevents spyware from being installed in the first place (most other tools are effective for cleaning up spyware that is already installed.
Steve Denning has a new blog on storytelling. Actually, it's a clever marketing tool for his new book due in 2005...but the blog presents some interesting posts on innovation, humour, and storytelling.
Expertise Finders: "How can we ever hope to produce effective Expertise Finders when we can't even get people in our own organizations to keep their personal information up to date?"
Social Network Analysis Benefits - simple, one page .pdf file addressing the benefits of SNA. I'd love to see some of these benefits applied to teaching/learning with my students. Educators understand teaching...we're just not too clear on learning. I believe SNA can help to provide a clearer assessment of what's really happening outside of test scores.
Wikis And Face-To-Face Events: "Face-to-face gatherings are very good at generating a large amount of enthusiasm and momentum. Unfortunately, that energy usually dissipates soon afterwards...For the past two years, I've been designing a set of processes that use online tools to maintain and even increase that energy after an event."
Comment: Courses and other learning events have a similar problem - after its done, ties are cut. Not every course has the potential to become a vibrant community...but I think every course should plug learners into existing communities so that a learner can choose to stay current in a field.
What, Me Register?...short article on the trend towards "registration required" access to news sites and other content. It's frustrating to login in order to read news articles. My concern isn't with privacy (as the author notes, many people don't provide their real identity). My concern is with disruption of access to information. It may only be a matter of a few seconds to login...but multiply that by several hundreds sites, and it adds up. What many paper publishers don't get is that the exclusivity of one news source is diluted online. Locally, I may only have access to a handful of different newspapers. Online, I have access to thousands. The online content has to be exceptional in order for me to register.