Started reading this article - Enterprise 2.0 (via Bill Ives) - with a bit of cynicism. I've heard a fair bit about enterprise 2.0 over the last year and lump it in with web 2.0 hype - some good points are made, but the jargon is overwhelming. But I ended up liking the article. It provides a good overview/review of factors impacting organizations (and it comes with the token "2.0" diagram of many arrows and small boxes with "the person" at the centre), and the importance of considering a variety of social, transparent tools for collaboration.
Jack Vinson talks about the elusive "me" collector - getting all our stuff into one place (he provides a nice list of aggregators). Anyone spending time online quickly scatters his/her digital identity across blog posts, wiki contributions, comments on blogs, etc. I must admit, I would like a central place for the "digital me". But, then I think of the problems. What happens if a centralized site goes down? What happens if a closed service like Facebook holds my digital identity and they decide to change their policies? Suddenly "me aggregated" doesn't seem so attractive - the temporary increased control gives way to a loss of freedom and increased reliance on a single service. Perhaps the best we can expect is to have a central ID (OpenID) and let our identity scatter across the web. After all, I don't apply the same metric of aggregation to my physical world (i.e. every conversation in one space).
Other than the unfortunate reference to a shortly-lived term (i.e. web 2.0 will not be in common use much longer as we move to web 3D or web whatever), this sentence captures the scope of change we are facing - Old School, New School: "Some see the advent of Web 2.0-style tools in the classroom heralding a shift in everything from education theory to how schools are built."
Short report - e-Learning Market to hit $56B by 2010. I'm interested in what is being defined as elearning, as it seems many marketing activities (training your clients) serve basic learning functions. If elearning is seen as what happens in an online course only, I'm not convinced the market is that large (for example, how is K-12 elearning measured? Is it a course that is offered online? blended?). Is the physical infrastructure (computers for example) included in the cost? Of course, to get access to that info, one needs only purchase a report for a few hundred dollars. (And what does this statement mean???: "The key driver for e-learning usage is attributed to an increased number of solutions and services".) Not even sure why I link to it...oh yeah, now I remember: elearning is growing rapidly in the US, Asia and Europe are lagging in overall adoption, but also growing rapidly. Canada doesn't exist.
Sign of the times? Mandarin added to curriculum, French phased out. See also Never Mind French and Spanish
Newspapers (media in general) afford educators a glimpse of the challenges of transitioning from a traditional model of interacting with an audience based on centralized control to a more open model reflective of the needs of a changed audience. To this end, Fortune looks at how the Washington Post is attempting to remake itself. It's quite an interesting read of the frustrations and challenges of transitioning: playing to existing strengths which don't fully exist in the new format, while experimenting with adding social elements, podcasts, and blogs to the web site (and a bit ironically, 43% of the Post's revenue comes from an investment in education services through Kaplan). Yet the issue of time is significant - online revenue does not match the decline of revenue from print publication.
Some stats on video streaming habits in the US in May...average stream: 2.5 minutes, 74% of internet users watched streaming video, Google sites comprise ~50% of video users.
Overstated, I think, but an interesting perspective - The Internet is dead: "...cable and satellite networks are now superior to the Internet as platforms for building complex, interactive services...Networks built by telephone companies, like Verizon Communications, and cable companies, like Comcast, do not easily talk to each other, stymieing development of services (like HD video) that require smooth, seamless transport of lots of digital stuff."
Ever wonder about the educational structure of different countries? (Come on, admit it, we all do). While certainly not exhaustive (only includes nine countries at this point), World Almanac of Educational Technologies is a wiki "designed to explore the concepts, conditions and uses of technological tools within global education initiatives". For the countries currently listed, the reader is provided with a solid overview of the structure and method of education, policy, and technology use.
Online Social Networks, Virtual Communities, Enterprises, and Information Professionals: "The field of social networks and virtual communities is new, relatively unstructured, and very dynamic. Organizations everywhere are struggling to understand and benefit from it."
Good introduction to the history of social networking. More accurate, however, to state that the technology behind social networks and communities is advancing (it's not really new). Virtual communities have been around since 1980s (as mentioned in the article). Recently the formation of these networks and communities has become much simpler. The real area of growth is the ease of tool use.
A few thoughts on privileged peer review on my connectivism blog: "Peer review, in its current conception, appears to be more concerned with preserving privilege than with advancing knowledge. I find more zeal, energy, and creativity in the chaotic edublog community than I find in formal journals. And I personally would rather stand with others on the fertile verge of technology and education defined by enthusiasm and a spirit of advancement than to pursue a method of knowledge validation antiquated for our scholarly needs today."
Similar to the concept of parallel conversations I wrote about earlier this year: inattentive trust building : passive trust building : network connectivity: "There is a theory that a significant part of trust building occurs outside of the time when someone is "attentive" to you.
When you and I are talking and we are interacting that only builds a certain type of relationship or trust. The real depth of trust building comes as I observe how people act not with me but others...Direct online interaction robs the very important inattentive trust building components to relationships. Twitter, facebook, etc. provide a unique window into watching someone without paying direct attention to them."
See also Thomas Vander Wal's post on Sharing and Following/Listening in the Social Web, which discusses the shift from broad line listening and sharing online to more "granular" (think twitter).
It's rather perplexing to watch how the individual, local activities of an agent (ants for example) can produce, when aggregated, surprisingly effective outcomes for an entire group. Swarm Theory is a great introduction to the benefits of aggregated individual efforts. Based on the activities or ants and bees, a discipline/theory/science has emerged (no pun) which is capable of providing "best options" information in very complex environments. For ants, it might be about finding food...for a company, about finding the best way to manage resources or run supply chains. Eric Beinhocker tackled the impact of complex behavioural outcomes through swarm-based behaviour in Origin of Wealth (a book that has received far less attention than it deserves). It would appear that functioning in truly complex spaces moves us beyond centralized vs. decentralized debates, and puts us instead in a philosophy of simple rules, local activity, and high levels of connections/contact. The most overwhelming problems can be attended to with this simple model. The solution is not something we work on directly...instead it emerges when we attend to the individual elements.
Much of how we relate to information is a function of changed medium (duh!). Consider music - what consumers wanted when Napster appeared, was the ability to control their music, not listen to 12 tracks from an artist when only 2 were wanted. The first reaction to digital music was not of piracy, but convenience. Piracy became more prominent as the music industry pushed back instead of listening to their customers. Similarly, I hear of wikipedia being evaluated in terms of accuracy. For most people, wikipedia is about access to, not accuracy of, information (it's an important distinction - we're ok with "good enough" information when we need it quickly for a basic task or low-level understanding). Newspapers have similarly suffered due to a format that doesn't meet the wants of today's readers. Once the format aligns with the manner in which readers desire news, the ills of the industry are at least slightly abated. Online newspapers are growing: "Newspapers’ online audiences are rising at twice the rate of the general internet audience"
I can see much cause for alarm with Revelation-like comparisons (also stated in the article) to embedded microchips: "“We’re really on the verge of creating a surveillance society in America, where every movement, every action — some would even claim, our very thoughts — will be tracked, monitored, recorded and correlated,” says Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology and Liberty Program at the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, D.C."
I fear we are being numbed into accepting progressive encroachments into traditionally accepted views of privacy. It is one thing to declare my thoughts and interests in a blog or Facebook profile. It is quite another to remove personal volition and have information extracted (or tracked) based on the needs of an employer (or other organization). The first is a hallmark of personal freedom. The second is a hallmark of oppression and control.
While information and knowledge accuracy is much more complex than a simple compilation of corrected errors in one source over another, I still couldn't resist the opportunity to link to this entry: Errors in Britannica that have been corrected in Wikipedia.
Mediators - in the form of editors, TV news anchors, publishers - serve as a barrier for direct access to information in traditional media. As frequently noted in this forum, technologies like blogs, podcasts, and user generated video, form a backbone of a larger wave of change washing over our social fabric. Principles of open and direct access suggest that mediators are not required to the same degree as has formed the basis of media over the past century. YouTube and CNN are conducting an interesting experiment of allowing the voters to directly ask questions of presidential candidates. While not perfect (not all questions posed are asked (there is still some mediation, though I imagine that's required to keep things from slipping into chaos), and, as one article states, questions aren't always answered directly), it's an indication of the power shift from mediator to voter.
Design is altered by use. We see it everywhere - software is used in ways not intended by the creator, or a game console is "hacked" and used for different purposes than it was designed for. The circumstance of use has greater impact on how and item is used than initial design (unless, of course, the design process was tested in an environment which solicited feedback). "Use over design" is not limited to software or physical products. The same occurrence is observed in the design of corporations and organizations. An organization chart details "lines of authority". In reality, work is done in a more networked manner with less regard for how the organization has been formally designed. The Hidden Workplace looks at how work actually gets done: "In every company there is a parallel power structure that can be just as important as the one everyone spends stressful days trying to master...[a] "constellation of collaborations, relationships, and networks"".
Nothing more enjoyable than a confusing diagram of a confusing subject. Enter Information Architect's diagram of web trends for 2007. It tackles a while to work through the diagram (the legend on the bottom right helps somewhat)...but the effort is worth it.
It's fascinating to watch Facebook's role on the web evolve. Techcrunch asks: Could Facebook become the next Microsoft?: "Facebook is starting to become the one stop shop for content and interaction, be it through feeds, blog creation, image uploading and just plain ol’ social networking."
I've stated this before, but the impact of FB became apparent to me based not on stats, but on the types of people who were sending me invites - family, friends, former employees...basically people who were completely outside of my usual digital life. The penetration, uptake, and addiction of FB are incredible.
Not sure how I feel about this: Digital coach provides "instant feedback on anything from your conversational style to your fitness regimen." The personal performance coach also lets you know if you talk to much at meetings. I could see that being a good gift to provide to some people...
I've posted a short article on research in education on the U of Manitoba's LTC Research Blog: "We have a challenge and proposed direction of better educational research. Yet the methods are in dispute. Perhaps more significant - even when methods are largely agreed upon, the outcomes of research fail to touch and substantially impact academic activities. Our collective understanding of “good teaching and learning” clashes with systemic structures and procedures."
...and it serves to remind me of Stephen Downes' excellent discussion from 2005 on research with regard to theory verification (which relates well to our activities as educational researchers, but raises the question of to what degree we need methodologies based on epistemology or if verification is a function of progressive iteration in the hands of many practitioners): "The best argument Jonassen can advance for his theory is to describe the theory; the question of fit is determined, over time, by the cumulative experiences of a multitude of practitioners against nebulous and undefined criteria. And the determination of whether problem-based learning is widely accepted will depend as much on whether we decree that the desirable output of the educational system is improved economic performance in a market based economy, or adroit adaptation in a rapidly changing environment."
David Weinberger and Andrew Keen during an WSJ interview: Weinberger: "Open up The Britannica at random and you're far more likely to find reliable knowledge than if you were to open up the Web at random. That's why we don't open up the Web at random. Instead, we rely upon a wide range of trust mechanisms, appropriate to their domain, to guide us."
Is anyone really surprised that kids are moving away from email? Kids say e-mail is, like, soooo dead. Email serves certain needs well in business/academic contexts, but most "kids" are more concerned about immediate communication and sustained contact. So facebook, myspace, instant messaging, and tools like twitter are preferred. Move these fine kids into a business environment, and I imagine their email use would go up...simply because email is inherently more useful for conversations and information sharing that occurs in these environments. I use a variety of tools to augment my communication beyond email. But at no point have I considered email dead. It's still a vital tool for the types of information exchanges I'm involved in on a daily basis. Different contexts, different tools.
This is cool: searchCrystal (via Smart Mobs): "lets you search and compare multiple engines in one place. It is a search visualization tool that enables you to compare, remix and share results from the best web, image, video, blog, tagging, news engines, Flickr images or RSS feeds."
Tried a variety of self-serving search terms - great (accurate) results.
A few months ago, Jimmy Atkinson irritated a few bloggers with his Top 100 Education blogs list (the source of the irritation seems to be that he operates the Online Education Database site...and the blog list was a clever way to drive traffic). Regardless, he has initiated a new blog - Wide Open Education, written by Steve Carson - covering the impact of the open source movement on education. I've been following the blog for the last few weeks, good resources and information with no direct advertising in RSS feeds. While Wide Open Education is obviously intended to increase awareness of the parent site, it provides a valuable service to the edublog community.
An industry in decline often continues with the same premises, activities, and outward appearances as it's always held. Business as usual. Then, overnight it seems, the bottom drops out. The small incremental changes converge to dramatically shift an entire industry. Happened with music, classified ads, news, and now advertising (I still maintain that educators have lessons to learn from the change in these fields - the experiences of centralized, content-centric industries are worth observing as potential indicators of what may happen in education). Forbes reviews the tremendous drop in advertising dollars for traditional publications. Like most anything else, advertising is moving from centralized expensive investment to smaller, more decentralized approaches. Instead of projecting the message in one paper with one ad, companies are advertising in a network-model, relying increasingly on blogs. The problem (opportunity) with networks is that the originator of a message losses control over what happens and how it's received. Not much value in talking back to a magazine ad. But when the audience has a platform to speak, authenticity of message becomes critical. Tech Boom, Media Bust: "A successful blog can simply grab more readers, per employee, than more traditional media."
Our memory needs are different when we have different tools. I remember the criticism about calculators - they would cause students to forget their multiplication tables. In reality, as tools perform our more basic tasks, we ramp up to more complex cognitive activities. With increased access to information, the need to memorize basics is eliminated. But, the transition will not occur without a fair bit of lamentation over lost capabilities. Consider this article: Mobile phones 'dumbing down brain power: "People have more to remember these days, and they are relying on technology for their memory. But the less you use of your memory, the poorer it becomes. This may be reflected in the survey findings which show that the over 50s who grew up committing more to memory report better performance in many areas than those under 30 who are heavily reliant on technology to act as their day to day aide memoir."
Periodically, us Canadians emerge from our hockey arenas to survey occurrences in the world outside. During this annual emergence to interact with the small world outside of hockey, we occasionally find that we - as a nation - a) have much snow and b) have been unfairly criticized on some subject. We have come to accept "a". In regard to "b", we rouse our most able members to right the wrong. Recently, after Canada was ravaged for sheltering most of the bad people in the world (you know, those people with no morals who video tape movies and burn CDs), Michael Geist responded with an 8 minute video - Putting Canadian Piracy in Perspective. Now, back to the arena.
EdTechTalk was doing podcast type stuff before it was cool to do so. I had the pleasure last night of stopping in and listening to a live show with Curt Bonk. Jeff Lebow (courteous) and Dave Cormier (cantankerous) offer a tremendous service to the edtech community with this site. Their archives are rather hard to find (a simple page with a listing of their 79+ edtechtalk weekly show was not to be found after 15 minutes of rigorous exploration on my part), but you can subscribe to various shows. (Dave skyped me with the link to archives) Great work!
It's time to drop e-learning: "It’s time to drop e-learning. Let’s be specific. It’s time to drop the ‘e’ in e-learning.
It’s time to recognise that the ‘e’ carries the stigma of past hyperbole, puts some potential learners and managers off and smacks of a love of technology that has everything to do with content delivery, rather than individual learning."
Yeah, ok, and whatever. Language is power. Language is familiarity. Playing word-games (providing new terms, new definitions, and adding/dropping letters) has more to do with staking a personal claim in a field than it does about pursuing clarity. So we drop the "e" in "elearning". Then what? Well, we have distributed, blended, mobile, distance, informal, personal, (and on and on) learning. The terms of common use have the greatest value. While elearning has lost meaning, it means more to teachers, trainers, managers, and educators than any other term. Mind you, five years from now, we'll be advocating dropping informal, distributed, and blended learning in favor of just learning. What fun we can have with words.
I haven't linked to an explicit blog-based article for a while - like any tool with a bit of history, blogging has become more accepted and transparent. Blogging is no longer the direct focus of dialogue. Instead, we focus on what it does and what it enables (and how edubloggers long for those days when saying "blog" or "wiki" required an explanation before continuing the discussion!). Wall Street Journal announces a tenth blogiversary (it seems that blog is more of a root word to be repurposed as desired by authors than a term with meaning in itself): "In the decade since their conception, blogs, once a smorgasbord of links, have evolved into vehicles for a fuller, more forceful and opinionated prose." See also a short history of blogging (which disputes the accuracy of WSJ assertion of "the first blogger")
Libraries, while often chided for being too structured for our information era and for providing a service now under the control of learners (namely, accessing information), have made more progressive advancements in adjusting their services to meet the needs of learners and society today. A Hipper Crowd of Shushers offers a quick overview of process of cool-inizing librarians.
I'm still on my data visualization and information overload kick (I'm currently in Lisbon...and will be presenting on this theme to IADIS conference tomorrow). Jon Udell highlights the importance of open data - OECD has significant data available and UN recently released its common database. When data is open, we can mix, remix, contrast, extend, and use it in limitless ways. Hans Rosling delivered two amazing talks displaying the power of visualizing data in 2006 and 2007. Powerful stuff.
Facebook statistics show incredible growth and demographic shifts. Facebook is pulling casual internet users (those who use email, read a few news articles) into the network of active users. Admittedly, I lack stats to support that assertion - I'm just basing it on observation, discussion with Facebook users, and diverse requests I've encountered from a different cross-section of society than I typically encounter in my blog/wiki/podcast/whatever conversations.
ShareIdeas is "an online community and a wiki for sharing ideas on how to use mobile communications for social and environmental benefits" (via Smart Mobs). Case studies - still quite sparse on the site - cover education, economics, health, civic engagement, etc. A great idea. I wonder how we can create greater synergy around these many notable efforts. I've come across so many wikis, communities, and blogs seeking to tackle similar concerns. Is there a way to bring some of these ideas together? Would it create a greater impact than small-scale individual endeavors? And why do we duplicate what already exists - do we still pursue personal recognition even in our altruism?
The stroop effect is a delay in processing when we encounter a conflict in the semantic meaning of a concept and how it's presented. For example, if we are given a list of colours with different names than the colour in which they are listed (for example, the word blue is displayed in yellow). Cognitive Daily posts some interesting research on hypnosis to overcome this delay. A comment follows the article which suggest that a reader focus on the last letter of the word, rather than the entire phrase, thereby reducing the conflict between reading and recognition. It seems that we are experiencing two different actions with the stroop effect - the active processing which occurs via reading, and recognition of colors...which produces the conflicting delay. What does this have to do with learning? No idea. Just interesting.
I don't know. Maybe I've fatalistically accepted that technological change rewrites reality so rapidly that it's increasingly futile to make predictions about technology's future. So, we encounter a Gartner prediction that by 2011 80% of active internet users will have a "second life" in virtual worlds. Huh? An absolute grasping statement, with no basis. Too much can (and will) happen for this prediction to have any value. Problem is, we'll start to see this prediction in online forums, conference presentations, and so on...generating blind acceptance. As I've whined about previously (and recently saw in a post on ITForum), virtual worlds will gain my interest when they allow me to do something I can't do anywhere else.
Any type of online discussion - whether through blogs or more traditional discussion forums - yield a wealth of information for researchers. Which learners comment on each other? Which themes generate the greatest interest? What is the shape of question-answer networks? What is the shape of learning networks?Visualizing the Signatures of Social Roles in Online Discussion Groups tackles some of these questions through analysis of discussion forums, producing some interesting visualizations of learner interactions.
Just came across this "blue sky vision" for neuroscience - nice approach to involving the larger community in formulating research and strategy. We could do with a similar approach to education. Maybe we should post something of this sort (through the LTC). What types of questions should we be asking as we "blue sky education"?
I continue to stress about the "2.0'ing" of everything, but I've been following the Museum 2.0 blog recent - great ideas being presented. Museums, like education, news, and any other content-focused industry, is in the midst of significant changes. How do we engage our audience/visitors/students? How do we foster interaction around our objects/content? To what degree do we foster interaction...and to what degree do we seek to move learners toward an intended outcome? Shared challenges and many opportunities to learn from each other. Consider this post from Museum 2.0:
...the evolution of object-centered museums, the "treasure troves" to include more diverse interpretation and presentation styles to promote contextual, multi-sensory understanding of the artifacts. But by repackaging object-centered museums for appreciation by non-experts, they may lose the essential spooky wonder that made the objects so captivating to the original audience. An over-emphasis on interpretation can distort the power of contemplative exploration of objects; instead of offering a distinct experience from other kinds of museums, the new interpretative museum just offers the same packaging of distinct stuff.
Any new tool - especially one imbued with Apple's charm - generates an initial rush of excitement. I've been following the hype of the iPhone, and while I suffer from envy as a Canadian without access to the device, I've concluded its capacity to be a "game changer" is greatly overstated. The iPhone is obviously cutting edge as a phone. And it's beautiful. And it almost works as well as promised. And it enlarges our activity options, promising better web-browsing and convergence of devices and media. But setting those things aside, what does it change? The $100 laptop is a game changer - it puts technology into the hands of those who previously lacked access.
But at $600+ a pop, the iPhone is a cool toy (that I would admittedly love to have) that appeals (or is affordable) to a small segment of society. In countries where internet access is limited and PCs are in rare supply, a mobile phone is a game changer because it enables people to access new information and conversations. But, if I had an iPhone, I can't see what I'd do differently. Browse the web? Email? Mobile learning (the problem with mobile learning stems from lack of useful resources - lots of hype, but we lack development tools)? I do that with my Blackberry - and use Twitter, Google Talk. Sometimes I call people. Listen to my iPod? I prefer my nano for running or even driving. Camera? Ok, but most cellphones current have that as well...So, for those of you who possess an iPhone, what makes it unique/different/a game changer? From where I stand, the iPhone is more about technolust - it makes the game a bit smoother and cooler, but certainly doesn't change things. A $20 (or less) mobile phone in developing countries...or poor regions in developed countries...is a game changer.
