eLearning Jockey

Second Keynote of #IEL2010: John Romero

2010-06-03T09:00:00.005-04:00

Oh, John Romero. Creator of games that enlivened our youth and probably caused mass onsets of early carpal tunnel syndrome. Visionary, etc., etc. I would have loved to have talked to you about the process of game design and the importance of user-centric navigation. I think that you would have been a great speaker at LEEF or GLS, but I think you were kind of out of place at IEL - we kind of want to know what all of what you said had to do with what we do.

Anyway, my notes below.

Deathmatch to Dailies: the Evolution of the Social Game – John Romero

Sennet – the first social game that we know of. However, we don't know the rules (remember Lost).

Moms are the new hardcore gamers (think Farmville).

Social games = 80 million users/month

Baseball – is it a game?

Ebay is a game. Vegas is a game.

Arrival of personal computing was the marking of the 30 yr period of aberration – games no longer social.

Wheeler Dealers – first multiplayer video game (for the Apple II). Back in 70s?

As of 1989, only 20 multiplayer games existed. One group had created 6 of them.

MUDs came in 1978.

FPS – the right return to multiplayer? The technology and the will...

Wolfenstein 3D, then Doom (1996).

Doom – multiplayer over modem or LAN.

Violent, fast, feedback. Players loved it.

Multiplayer → deathmatch!!! oh, thank u, technology.

Doom II: not so much innovation.

Quake: advent of true 3D engine. Shadows, lights, etc. Less cartoony, more realistic. Also, internet play introduced.

So, at this point, developers ready, technology ready, BUT players not totally ready.

But then came the MMRO – Ultima Online.

Ultima Online – very open. Developers rushing to plug holes that users were exploiting. 100K players at its peak. $15/month.

Everquest! 3D, online, etc. 430K at peak, $15/mo.

WoW: Nov 2004. Based on Ultima and Everquest, but totally overshadowed them both. Continues to, actually. Juggernaut. 12 mil players, $15/mo.

So now, devs, tech and players are ready. What now?

Facebook.

Facebook games are asynchronous, unlike MMOs.

Effectively, also, u choose the ppl u play with (they're ur 'friends').

Facebook games are easy to make, unlike MMOs.

We don't know where this is going.

A crash?

Facebook's working on privacy settings to cut down the stream of crap we get.

Farmville still holds.

4 ppl worked on Wolfenstein.

250 ppl worked on the Godfather (the game)

Still room for the small group of ppl who wanna make a game (especially w/iPhone).

Twitter and Facebook making their way into casual games (Canivault!)

Simulations in the real gaming world – not really a money maker.

First Keynote of #IEL2010: Alan Kay

2010-06-02T13:16:00.008-04:00

If you don't know who Alan Kay is, just know that he's largely responsible for the paradigm via which you are viewing this post. Anyway, we here at George Mason University's Innovations in eLearning Conference had the honor of having him as our first keynote speaker of the two-day symposium. Below are my (mostly) unedited rough notes on his speech.

What Does it Mean to Learn Something New?

Alan Kay: actually knowledgeable about George Mason (the man)

Coping built into our nervous systems – not learning.

Learning (the way we do) is a lot about coping, too (making things facile and connected to old stuff)

Pop culture pervades -sciences are infiltrated (and filtered?)

...and now we're talking about war.

used to be ppl standing in front of other ppl. Ppl w/most ppl left at the end wins.
then came rifles, then trenches, then tanks, then planes and U-boats, then radar, then H-bomb

Basically, things are developed, but ppl don't understand for some time what exactly those things are good for.

Ow. Shout out to DAU through war talk.

Anyway: “We are forced to experience the present in terms of the past.” (Marshall McLuhan)

Training....most elearning is about training. This works well for static, canon, non-changing subject matter. Unfortunately, a lot of what is to be learned is not static, nor clearly related.

We cling to what is familiar (Gutenberg bibles actually had illustrators, to make ppl feel comfortable w/the innovation). It took Europe 150 yrs to really get the potential of the printing press.

This works for computing. Most of what we do with computers is imitation of old things.

Sometimes we do new things – like programming. Programming is kind of something new.

But even that is largely old – replicating punch card systems, rather than something simple and new.

New means invisible. New is quarks. New is somethng that we can't talk about right away, because there is so much to learn before you can even begin to talk about the new stuff. As a result, no one is teaching this stuff. No elearning group is helping ppl learn stuff.

Hm. Apparently Alan Kay thought about tablet PCs for kids and kid programming back in 1968. Suck it, Jobs. Oh, and 'luggable is not portable' – less than 2 lbs, flat screen display.

Wheels for the mind: let ppl go full out with their minds, and amplify that (Like a bike! Not a prosthetic. Like a car).

Xerox Park went by Arthur C. Clarke's quote: “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Basically, the Internet is super-potent, and is basically reduced to being a mirror (e.g., Facebook).

'New' becomes 'news' (which we get). What we get is the walking dream of reality.

McLuhan: “Until I believe it, I can't see it.”

What the hell is Alan Kay's presentation software? (answer: eToys!)

There are about 300 Human Universals (coping, language, stories, 'the other', religion/magic, reactions to patterns). Marketing gold: find a human universal and create technology to amplify it.

We are not really perceiving reality. We are percieving distortions (literally – thumb example).

Belief distorts reality. New gets turned into news.

For the time that we've been around, it has taken us a long time to do stuff (write/read, do science, math, etc).

Things that are really new to humans: progress, math, slow deep thinking, democracy, thinking rather than reemmbering, equal rights, reading/writing. Things not based on precedents, not based on things tat happened in the past. News is about stuff that happened in the past and rooted in the past. 'New' is about stuff that never happened before and, frankly, is about what makes sense.

% of American adults who can read/write about ideas 20

% of American adults who can sustain a conversation about science: 5

Most ppl are basically coping. Dismal.

Consider theh goldfish: it vcan't really talk to u about water cuz it doesn't know anything else.

The improbablilty of a good idea is high. So have a bunch of ideas and 'prove the hell out of them.'

Science 101:

There are things that are new.
You must prove that they exist.

It takes almost as much creativity to learn a new idea as it did to create/invent it.

What are computers good for? Helping us 'unmurk' – to get at details.

(Think climate change research.)

Marvin Minsky disagrees w/McLuhan: Science allows us to live in the present rather than dream the fantasy.

Time in history in which u were born is worth more than simple IQ. Being born in the wrong century kind of sucks.

Outlook > Knowledge > IQ, because the grey/pink matter in our heads leans towards human universals (because it was never smart enough to do the stuff we need.)

So! We need schools to change outlook, not simply provide knowledge.

Help Needed to Learn: one of many axes of the types of learner (help needed, in this case)

we're good a universals
not so good at non-universals

This is not even to begin to speak of other axes, like motivation.

Discovery learning! Problem? We're 'discovering' the 'wrong' things.

We need guides – ppl who know stuff and make it interesting (thiink Richard Feynmann).

For books, knowledge + style = gold.

Listening to ppls answers as information that reveal what ppl are thinking rather than start by judging as right or wrong.

Learning software as personal tutor (Obama said so). Can we do this? Can we create listening devices?

Xerox Park innovated, Apple and MS took stuff and watered it down for sale, and didn't even implement other stuff. Depressing. Part of why this happened is because education didn;t jump in and say 'what is this new stuff u r doing?'

Kay a fan of cramming head full of stuff and having that stuff as background knowledge – forgetting stuff to have the 'beautiful odor' of forgotten knowledge help u in innovation.

Xerox Park was seriously DIY. They made almost everything themselves.

Ppl who have new ideaas tend to lack discipline. Ppl who have discipline tend to have too much of it.

Think Thomas Edison – 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.

Twitter resource dump

2009-06-26T13:01:00.003-04:00

Don't mind me - just posting some Twitter resources for colleagues in need. Enjoy!

Twitter in Plain English: http://www.commoncraft.com/twitter
5 Questions About Twitter from a Learning Executive: http://tbd-consulting.typepad.com/mikeabrams/2009/02/5-questions-about-twitter-from-a-learning-executive.html
50 ways to use Twitter in the classroom: http://saywha15.blogspot.com/2009/06/50-ways-to-use-twitter-in-classroom.html
So I introduced my students to Twitter: http://education.zdnet.com/?p=1605
Some Professors Losing Their Twitter Jitters: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/25/AR2009062504027.html
Twitter Experiment: Twitter in the College Classroom: http://compassioninpolitics.wordpress.com/2009/06/25/twitter-experiment-twitter-in-the-college-classroom
Connexions: Directory of Learning Professionals Online: http://c4lpt.co.uk/connexions/ (also see her 100 featured learning pros list)
MrTweet: http://mrtweet.com/
Top 21 Twitter Applications: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/19/the-top-20-twitter-applications/
99 Essential Twitter Tools and Applications: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/03/17/99-essential-twitter-tools-and-applications/
(This one is for Shawn) TweetDeck iPhone App vs. Tweetie: Twitter App Smackdown: http://mashable.com/2009/06/16/tweetdeck-vs-tweetie/
Social Learning Question of the Day (SLQOTD): http://elearningweekly.wordpress.com/2009/02/19/social-learning-question-of-the-day/
On blogging and the cultural virtues of Twitter: http://www.openculture.com/2009/02/on_the_blogging_and_cultural_virtues_of_twitter.html
Twitter for Teachers wiki: http://twitterforteachers.wetpaint.com/?t=anon
Twitter Trumps Online Conference - Six Steps For Using Twitter For Your Conference Or Event: http://www.twitip.com/twitter-trumps-online-conference-six-steps-for-using-twitter-for-your-conference-or-event/

IEL09: 12 take-aways

2009-06-09T18:47:00.006-04:00

I live in the Washington DC metropolitan area, and I'm a learning professional. As a result, I've been hearing about ASTD's International Conference & Expo since the beginning of this year. Because I had previously blown my big conference money earlier this calendar year, I wasn't able to attend. I wasn't worried, though - for my money, the best conference for the buck started the day that ASTD ICE ended.

Having attended last year's conference, I came to the 5th Annual Innovations in e-Learning Symposium (IEL09) this year with high expectations, and I'm happy to say that the GMU/DAU partnership did not disappoint: great keynotes, good sessions and the opportunity to get a feel for where the edges are in our field. Here are 12 things that IEL09 showed me about my colleagues, the future and the state of e-learning:

I really need to get an iPhone. Or at least an iPod Touch. Maybe some sort of Android-sporting MID, maybe? From Vint Cerf's notions of a fully connected world (and and solar system, apparently) through compatible 'clouds' to Adrian Sannier's impassioned pleas to stop fighting the devices and focus on the learning, I'm really starting to feel like i'm not spending enough time thinking about how to get in front of the impending wave of mobile internet devices and their use in creating more space for learning. Just as Will Wright's opined that we all speak a kind of complex sign language of the mous, i realized that a new vocabulary of pinch/flick/squeeze/drag is being formed without me. I need to get in the game.

To get yor money's worth, "to tweet or not to tweet?" isn't really even a question anymore. Livetweeting, if done properly, should not be a distraction. It should be both a stream of consciousness reflection on the information being presented to you and a way to include non-present participants in the open dialogue. It's also a great way to get information about the sessions that you couldn't attend since you can't yet clone yourself.

OK, so I kind of already knew this from this year's Annual Gathering, but the more intimate numbers at IEL09 really brought the open-this-up-to-the-world home to me. We are learning professionals: we learn, we process, we disseminate our experiences. Not trying our best to do so is malpractice.

(oh, and kudos to the presenters whose sessions i attended - not a one arched so much as an eyebrow at the twitterati in attendance. No hurt feelings, not a single "you're not paying attention to ME" impulse betrayed. Best move? Aaron Silvers got out ahead of his crowd by making the first slide of his deck a listing of his real name, his Twitter name and the conference hashtag. He even created a hashtag for his session so we wouldn't have to make one up)

"Learning" is wired. "Teaching" is tired. I've been trying not to read any of my colleagues post-IEL09 blog posts for fear of stealing their brilliance (which means that i still haven't read any of Wendy Wickham's posts. That woman is the fastest draw east of the Mississippi, incidentally), but Clark Quinn's recent Learnlets post reminded me of something that i thought between sessions on the first day of IEL09: we need to stop finding ways to train and start figuring our ways to make learning happen. Something I've noticed that has accompanied the downed aconomy is people looking to tighten their training departments' strangleholds on managing training in their organizations. Teachers back away from their students embrace of innovative technologies by banning their use, missing the point.

Training has a tendency to become a narrow thing; a verb, an event. Learning is a fuzzy, scary, recursive process, and to hear people talk, it's coming back. We need to get back to 'by any means necessary' and stop being afraid of disruptive technologies as they arrive; Web 2.0/social media tools are nothing more or less than attractive, multi-faceted means.

However...

Compelling, instructive case studies for the implementation of social media and Web 2.0 applications in information-secure environments are still few and far between. Yes, I said it. I went to Decision Superiority in the Information Age, A Knowledge Exchange Strategy for Enterprise Summary, Robert Scoble's Naked Conversations talk (don't get me started), The Social Web and Learning: A Case Study and A Look at Successful Implementation of Online Collaboration. I still haven't found what I'm looking for. Maybe i missed it? Talk me down.

We need to find a way to stop running from failure. I've been toying for some time with the idea of creating a possibility-rich learning environment (sim? braching scenario? mini games?) that deals with failure in a detailed, high fidelity manner. Pushback sometimes boils down to the idea that exposing the learner to failure is demoralizing and therefore counter to successful learning. I don't think that this is the case, and neither does Will Wright. Rich affordances and high fidelity failurtes are both instructive and intersting - ask any gamer.

Brandishing of your Web 2.0 talisman does not make the problems of retention and motivation vanish. I had the pleasure of meeting Jason Guard at IEL09. He works with adult learners without high school diplomas trying to get their GEDs and gain literacy skills. As a result he had a few choice words to say about the real world of andragogy that he inhabits. Good to remember (also good to keep in mind Frank Anderson's bit on training, retention and jokes).

Perceiving patterns makes us good at what we do. Clark Quinn and Wendy Wickham did me the honor of engaging me in a pretty interesting lunchtime discussion which happily flitted across a few topics, including the difference between stand-up trainers and e-learning jockeys and what makes a learning professional good at their job. Something that came up in conversation is the idea that our ability to perceive patterns and make connections is crucial to our ability to facilitate learning. Like a lot of things that come up in conversation with Clark Quinn or Wendy Wickham, I'd like to think about this some more...

e-Learning does not necessarily equal reduced costs. This is something that I already knew, but it was good to hear it addressed repeatedly by DAU's Frank Anderson.

The military is not sleeping on gaming or virtual worlds. Did you know that the U.S. Army has a Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation? No? Maybe you've heard of America's Army, yes? Also, noted is DAU's move into the virtual world space (aided by Tandem Learning, evidently) and the Joint Forces Command/Department of Defense roundtable on 3D Web Opportunities and Challenges for Joint Education.

Digital immigrants vs. digital natives is not necessarily as cut and dried as they keep trying to make you think it is. Free your mind and look at the needs of Gen Y vs. those of Gen X/boomers and you'll have your answers.

Collaboration: i do not think it means what you think it means. I'll leave it at that.

Meetspace (meatspace) is still where it's at. Despite our growing prowess at digital engagement and threaded conversation, I was still a bit surprised that some of best bits of the conference for me happened when I took the time to chat up someone I didn't know or answered some questions from people who were opening up to their colleagues about problems that they were facing at work. This isn't rocket science, but it is about people, and sometimes the best way to I even managed to learn a bit more about one of my colleagues and her teaching methods as they relate to an extracurricular activity - really great to have confirmed my sense that this person just "gets it." (An interesting collary to this face-to-face-is-best talk is that a good number of people who sought me out for conversation knew me from Twitter.)

Many thanks to the twitterati in attendance for being instructive in person and online. This year's IEL will be a hard act to follow, but I look forward to June 2010. Hope to see you all there!

what did you learn today?

2009-05-30T20:05:00.024-04:00

If you know me professionally, you know that I think that this Twitter thing is kind of a big deal. One of the best things about my Twitter experience has been flat access to some really smart people - not just to listen to what they have to say, but often to engage them in dialogue.

That's why on Thursday nights from 8:30PM to about 10:00PM EDT I try to be in front of a Twitter client somewhere in order to participate in #lrnchat, a weekly meeting of learning professionals on Twitter. Organized and moderated by the seemingly-everywhere-at-once @marciamarcia and kicked off with the question "what did you learn today?", the discussion topics have so far covered the sims/virtual worlds debate, mobile learning, the concept of play for adults, recycling existing learning materials and much more. Questions for #lrnchat are usually gathered in advance but the moderation is good and flexible, leading to good follow-up questions and free-flowing discussion.

If you're interested, @gminks was nice enough to create a couple of videos to show you how to set up for #lrnchat. Recent #lrnchat sesions have been happening on Thursday evenings, but there's been some talk of changing the date and time to accommodate more European, African and Asian participants (right now it's pretty Western Hemisphere-centric) - stay tuned.

EDIT: Don't just take my word for it - read @schnicker's Calling All Learning Professionals on Twitter.

Totally unreal

2009-05-30T17:50:00.014-04:00

Thanks to JaneBozarth for her pre-#lrnchat tweet which led me to this Chronicle of Higher Education article from a collegiate teacher who decided to give online teaching a go. Priceless excerpt below:

Then there were all the e-mail messages that I received from students. This one didn't understand the assignment. That one wanted to tell me why her assignment was late. Another felt that my feedback was too negative. Yet another wanted to apologize for the way she had stated her position, and on and on. Weary and obsessed, I began to feel that, despite my best efforts, I was not up to the task, not in control, not meeting my own standards. On top of that, I suspected my students didn't like me very much. That hurt. I began to break out in rashes and suffer sleepless nights.

That's when I knew that I would not do it again and would chalk it up to experience — even if that decision meant hanging up my chalk altogether. Try to talk me down. Tell me I didn't give it enough time. Call me old-fashioned and out-of-date. Just don't call me to teach online.

I'll leave that to (younger?) teachers who like living in a virtual world of virtual students with virtual goals, capacities, and ideas. Me? I'll stick to the virtues of live human interaction — in the classroom and elsewhere — in a world rapidly becoming, as some of my students might say, "totally unreal!"

Too much to talk about, even from this short excerpt. I'm not going to try to talk Ms. Clift down. I'm pretty sure that she went into this venture with the same hopes for success that she kindly shares with us now. I don't know how much time this all took, but i don't know if time is the problem. Availability to one's learners? Earnest effort? Maybe.

Fellow e-learning jockeys: do you consider your or your students' goals, capacities or ideas "unreal"?

I'll leave you with the essence of the article, from Ms. Clift herself:

To me, virtual anything is by definition not real.

NOTE: I changed the title of this post because as miffed as i am, the issue really isn't Ms. Clift herself. I don't want anyone to take the cheap route by focusing on her possible shortcomings instead of, say, focusing on what her experience with online learning says about the expectations of teacher-student interaction.

2009-05-30T17:50:00.001-04:00

Google Wave

2009-05-30T16:31:00.006-04:00

Lately, a few co-workers and I have been working to steadily increase the use of Microsoft SharePoint in our little ID group. I've been feeling pretty proud of us - it's taken awhile to get all of us up and running, and we're I think we're an example of how helpful something like SP can be.

Anyway, this morning I'm manhandling some pasta sheets at my local farmer's market and someone in line for strawberries starts talking to about a friend-of-a-friend's account of a sneak peek at something called Google Wave:

Google Wave is a product that helps users communicate and collaborate on the web. A "wave" is equal parts conversation and document, where users can almost instantly communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. Google Wave is also a platform with a rich set of open APIs that allow developers to embed waves in other web services and to build extensions that work inside waves.

And so forth. The buzz at the organic produce hut is that Google Wave is the product of follow-through on the question "What is email were created today?"

Questions:

Is this Google's attempt to take on the functional but decidedly unsexy Microsoft SharePoint, or is this something bigger?
Is this really something new?
How handy will this natural language processing be?
When can I have it?

EDIT: Check out the I/O 2009 Google Wave keynote presentation:

"What Can I Give to my People?": Annual Gathering Wednesday Keynote: Jeff Howe

2009-03-12T21:38:00.032-04:00

Jeff Howe (author of Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business) delivered an interesting keynote speech at the eLearning Guild's Annual Gathering Wednesday General Session this year.

Being a pretty avid consumer of geeky publications, I'd heard of Howe and was already familiar with the concept of crowdsourcing - the practice of outsourcing a job via an open call to an undefined group of people to perform a task - i wasn't sure how much new information would really hit me. Fortunately, i had quite a bit to know.

After opening with a self-conscious quip/anecdote about the role of Twitter in live presentations*, Jeff screened a trailer to introduce us to his core concepts (and his book).

I've tried to write this first AG09 posts a number of different ways, but i've decided that i'm not going to do a blow-by-blow (for that, please see my #ag09 Twitter posts from March 11 to March 13). Instead, I'll just give you the takeaways and my spin (this is my blog, i can do that).

Amateur Renaissance

Historically, people became something in order to do something - for example, to become published, you had to become a journalist and submit time served in return for the privilege of publication/syndication.

Today's youth don't necessarily feel the need to become something in order to do something. Push-button publishing and fluid expertise in the areas of photo and video manipulation are now possible as a result of the following

Cheap SLRs and the stickcam
Cheap, free or least five-finger-discounted editing software
Teh intarwebzes

and have resulted in quality media being produced and uploaded for the glory and the lols (and occasionally for the lulz) with the guiding question being simply "what can i give to my people?" Howe termed this confluence of ability and freedom to create "promiscuous creativity."

The Rise in Online Communities + the Open Source Revolution = the Democratization of Production

No matter where you work, most of the smartest people work for someone else." - Bill Joy

While Howe has spent time investigating MySpace and other communities where teens and young people congregate (a search which started with Howe following the Warped Tour), it is in some other communities where crowdsourcing was really proven to be manifest:

Threadless is a prime example: The Jakes started a T-shirt company/community in which the 'hard' work - submitting T-shirt designs and ranking/voting on which ones are best - is done by community members. This lunchtime workforce performs the necessary microtasks which keep Threadless up and afloat. The 'fateful decision', as Howe termed it, was not to allow a corporate entity to decide which designs were most production-worthy and to rather hand it over to the community. (Personal note: I learned about Threadless from its parent company's definitely-not-for-profit design forum YayHooray. I own the Communist Party T-shirt.)
istockphoto demonstrates what Howe termed the gift economy: "you can use what I have, but you must contribute." As a result of the aforementioned amateur renaissance, professional quality stock images - once an exclusive and expensive domain - have become much more accessible for both consumers and producers of content. (istockphoto's fateful decision? deciding to charge users a quarter for the acquisition of an image; that price has of this writing risen to about a dollar. Not mysteriously, Getty Images - the premier name in professional stock photography - bought istockphoto for $50 million.)
Current.tv, popularly known as Al Gore's TV channel, boasts a 30% amateur content rate.
Innocentive farms out problems to the worldwide community to solve for glory and for prize money. At the time of this writing, the front page of the site features an open call ("challenge") for someone to create a functional envelope trimer for the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. Howe pointed out that Innocentive boasts a 90% problem-solving success rate. Perhaps more interesting is that in 70% of the solutions, the solver already knew the solution - they were just out there, waiting to be (t)asked.
There's more, but i don't feel like talking about Fluevogs and birdwatchers.

Issues and thoughts

In the Q&A, someone asked a pretty insightful question that raised the issue of graphic designers vs. crowdsourcing, which Howe addressed in noting the current NO!SPEC campaign.
Both the audiences of the popular tech podcasts Buzz Out Loud and This Week in Tech (the Buzztown and the TWiT Army, respectively) have at numerous times, in my opinion, provided task completion at the result of both serious and half-serious calls for aid.

torrent of mind-bending new stuff coming soon

2009-03-12T08:48:00.002-04:00

Hotel wi-fi suffered a champion cramp last night.
Blog posts on yesterday's events at the eLearning Guild's Annual Gathering forthcoming (really).

In related news, my brain is a little sore.

ready for AG|09!

2009-03-08T19:48:00.009-04:00

getting my conference prep together:

Twitter account? Check.
Profile at the Annual Gathering's Ning site? Check.
Artifact-gathering apparatus? Check.
In-town transportation? Check
Lodging reservation at location other than the hotel where the conference is being held? Check.
Self-conscious consumption of other attendees' blog posts and published milestones? Check.

shamelessly overdue bookmark dump

2009-03-02T21:42:00.027-05:00

i'm sorry, guys - i've been reading, reading, reading for the past few weeks in preparation for my upcoming attendance at AG|09, but I haven't taken a moment to share anything. i know, i know.

anyway, here are. sorry about the lack of categories, but if i don't just get this out, this post might never appear.

Cathy Lombardozzi on the value of conferences
iTunes U: better than attending class?
Remember when you were an e-learning n00b? the eLearning Guild wants to talk to you.
Clark: variables and triggers (read his "author's note" at the end; so elegant)
Kevin Jones and the Requirements to Social Learning Adoption (kind of a catchy band name, no?)
The Ultimate Open Courseware toolset: free learning for everyone!
Build a video site in seconds
The Kindle 2 and the Author's Guild: old mediaheads throw a hissy. My wife says that this is all a publicity stunt for Amazon, but i'm afraid that this is the real face of fear coming from the desperate, clutching their meal tickets.
Free academic software for managing and sharing research papers. Where was this 12 years ago, Jane?
Speaking of academia, do you consider Twitter a free research portal?
Jay Cross: No more 'learners'. Actually, all i should have to have said was 'Jay Cross' and you should already have been clicking.
siftables: a new learning tool (don't you love TED? i know i do)
Speaking of TED, here's a bit for those of you still waiting to try Twitter
Brian, this one is for you: Effective Learning on Mobile Devices
Actually, Brian, I have some more: 1 and 2 and 3. Enjoy!
How to attend AG|09 (sorta) if you can't make it in person
Jeff Hurt stays on topic with 6 steps for using Twitter for your conference/event
If Jane wore glasses, they'd be coke bottle thick so that she could see the future.
Clark Quinn draws a Venn diagram.
Rationalizing a netbook. You know you want this.
Jane manages to come up with stuff i manage to miss. S'why she's in the Google Reader, friends.
I think my current job has done a lot for me on this front, but how did you learn about accessibility (or are you even induced to think about it)?
Clark Aldrich talks about a lot about sims. Some of them he even likes.
On communicating visually
Clive talks about a graphics style manual. I tried to put together a comprehensive guide a few years ago, but failed. Kind of seeing why.
Social Learning Question of the Day account on Twitter. Brilliant!
A tour of a low(ish)-budget video studio. Very nice.
100+ Language Learning sites
Jane recommends Busuu, a free online community for learning languages
and completing the language trifecta: Avatar Languages
wait, one more: SL Language Conference
More things i am blatantly stealing from Jane Hart: 18 People to follow for a real education on Twitter (very useful!), a presentation about what Twitter can do for you, and 38 ways to find great edublogs
Clark Quinn's 'least assistance' principle
The training department of the future. Spoiler alert: no flying cars.
Keep up with Clark Quinn's Monday Broken ID series.
This blog post kind of pulled me up short and made me think about the forces working in my workplace. Wendy's in-the-trenches reports tend to do that.
Speaking of Wendy, she unwittingly tipped me off to this: 10 things learning designers forget
Clark Aldrich allowed me to sound smart whilst talking to a colleague. Huzzah! On practice
Anthropology + learning studies = Craig. Well, in this case it equals Charlotte Linde, but it has my attention: Telling stories to 'work the past'
Let's check in with Big Dog, Little Dog
On Blogging and the Cultural Virtues of Twitter. I'm really starting to like this Open Culture blog.
Learning is like breathing
Don't miss the Online Symposium on New Media and Learning
Nailing down what i do: "social netlearning"?
Track all of my personal information on the web? Yes, please.
Social media stats that you can use.
An aesthetically-pleasing (well, for me) video on the history of the internet.
Clark Quinn is playing smaller gigs this year, man. It's all about the fans.
A well-said turn explanation as to why i will always devolve into drawing on napkins to convey what i mean.
Listen to Alec Jeong talk about Cooliris. This + a web-enabled SMARTBoard = pretty.
The e-Learning Lingo Podcast. Spit hot wonk yang like the, uh, wonkiest.
Tony Karrer hits you with a pop quiz: Video-Based eLearning Authoring tools
Koreen Olbrish said they were cool, and they were.
Jay Cross calls for agile instructional design
Clark Aldrich calls books out. Seriously, this guy is almost never a boring read.
Jane tips us off to two document sharing/editing sites: DocVerse and Docuter.
Also, Jane presents A Guide to Social Learning.
Mobile Learning in Senegal
An organ grinder of funny: compliance poetry
"If you can type, you can make movies" ...really?
E-learning: not a fad
Invest in your people: 100+ Free E-Learning Tools for Emplyee Training and Personal Training
Twitter for Teachers wiki
Tony Karrer talks about good writing
Required reading for Interaction Designers from the School of Visual Arts in NYC
In search of common ground: A task conceptualization to facilitate the design of (e)learning environments with design patterns. Yes, you're reading a scientific tract. Deal with it.
My favorite quote from this blog post: "The internet is not making us dumber. It's just that it's getting harder for people to pretend to be intelligent." Read the post in English here.
Graffiti as informal learning, social media
BackNoise lets you create conversations on the fly, in meetings, watching TV, during class, on the train, anywhere and anytime.
Autodidacts, unite!
Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter: what are they best used for, respectively?
A simple question (possibly our only question): how does learning happen best?

That's all for now. It's late.

'm learnin', ma..!

2009-02-25T07:48:00.002-05:00

this is for my tweeps trying to crack the m-learning nut (mLearning? mlearning? makes me think of someone insisting that they are learning).

oh, and this :)

fill up your cup

2009-02-25T00:23:00.007-05:00

i'm pretty sure that my president just told us all to hit the books:

...I ask every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training. This can be a community college or a four-year school, vocational training or an apprenticeship. But whatever the training may be, every American will need to get more than a high school diploma.

and the line that's going to be rolling off faculty lips come morning:

Dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It's not just quitting on yourself - it's quitting on your country.

i guess the University of Phoenix should expect some nice ROI on its recent advertising efforts.

ethics

2009-02-24T20:03:00.013-05:00

a colleague of mine is engaged in developing a certain type of ethics training.
she is presented with the option of creating a course that highlights what not to do, though she (correctly, in my view) feels in her gut that she should focus more on actions - reasons to do something than reasons not to do something.

in short order, a couple of things came to mind:

Boxed ethics training (you know the kind - speed race your colleagues to see who can finish fastest! itchy left-click finger ftw)
Goofus and Gallant
The current Pirate Bay trial and the moral/ethical issues surrounding file sharing
Corporate IT security and savvy users who circumvent protections to under the auspices of productivity
People who steal other peoples' lunches from communal refrigerators (you know who you are)

There was something else that came to mind, and (as usual), i expressed my theory in rather circuitous fashion (it's kind of a wonder that i ever come to the point). Karl Kapp, of course, has a more succinct turn:

Most ethics breaches are not because of a "lack of knowledge" which is what training addresses, it is because of a failure to see conflicts of interest or of choosing not to see conflicts of interest because you are somehow benefiting...one small indiscretion leads to others.

But what ethics violators fail to see is the damage they are causing themselves and others...they often think they are justified when they aren't.

In other words, since it's not about knowing what's been declared permissible, training that focuses on rattling off the do-nots is redundant at best. I think that people who flout laws and regulations big and small do so because they have made a threat assessment and have decided that the risks to self and others are small. The only way to change the behavior of someone who breaks the rules is to convince them that they've made an error in that threat assessment.

Also see:

Clark Aldrich's musings about the possibility of teaching ethics via simulations
The Steelers fan again on training for mixed messages

Microsoft Semblio follow-up

2009-02-18T20:54:00.001-05:00

a professional chaser to my earlier post about Microsoft Semblio.
Read the Talkback section - in particular, the post by one douglas_stein.

on retweeting

2009-02-16T17:57:00.002-05:00

tweeple, i have questions:

when you are retweeting someone else's retweet (RT), should you opt for a partial retweet (PRT) if you are editing for the 140-character rule?
what is the proper twittiquette for retweeting something that was originally a tweet in another language but that you have translated (into English, for example)?

hit me here or here.

sweet Android on a tablet..!

2009-02-11T20:25:00.010-05:00

thanks to my colleague Reony for the heads up on the new Archos Android Phone/Tablet.

An ultra-thin Internet Media Tablet coupled with a mobile phone running the Google Android platform. This is almost exactly what i've been looking for: an open source iPhone alternative that has the potential to not break the bank.

PC-like Internet experience enhanced by a high-resolution 5″ screen and full-width page viewing
Adobe Flash(TM) and Flash Video(TM) support, full screen
Access whenever and wherever to TV, movies, photos, music and games
Uncompromised TV recording and High Definition (HD) playback, all formats
Hundreds of hours of video storage, up to 500 GB
Innovative design: compact 10-mm ultra-thin tablet
Long battery life, 7 hours’ video playback
3.5G 7.2 Mb/s HSUPA
Laptop-like performance from the first implementation of OMAP3440 processor based on the ARM(R) Cortex(TM) superscalar microprocessor and DSP

so hot. Come on, Q3 2009!

Commenting working (finally)

2009-02-10T19:43:00.003-05:00

i flubbed the settings.
things are working ok now.

On Twitter

2009-02-09T20:50:00.016-05:00

It's been said that there are three stages of Twitter acceptance. I understand the reticence - it took me three tries over five months to 'get' Twitter. As a recent Twitter disciple and resident of the third stage, people that i know ask me 'non-twitterer' questions that really are variations of 'what is this thing?' and 'how do i put this to use?' I do my best to explain and contextualize, but i see more bemusement than acceptance.

This post is an attempt at not looking like a crazy person.

The Basics

i love Common Craft. View Twitter in Plain English to get some Twitter basics.

5 Questions

One of my outstanding, smarter-than-me tweeple (@MikeAbrams) gets the same questions that i do (actually, he's better qualified to answer them, but whatever...). Today, he posted the questions and answers from a forum on the purpose and core function of Twitter.

Read 5 Questions About Twitter From A Learning Executive. Very helpful.

"Not for People New to Social Learning"

Tony Karrer makes a good point in his post Twitter as Personal Learning and Work Tool:

My concern about twitter is that it will be too random for most people, especially those who have not established any relationships / understanding of the people they are following. Thus, my opinion is: Twitter is not a tool for people who are new to social media and the use of social media for personal learning and work.

There is one exception to this. If you are going to a conference or evening event where attendees will be using Twitter in a group fashion, then that's likely a good opportunity to try out the tool.

there you go. Enjoy!

how i (try to) keep up: part two

2009-02-09T20:07:00.006-05:00

so, after some thought I realized that I didn't give you a complete picture of my data sources.

here's another:

LinkedIn Discussion Groups

LinkedIn, if you're not already aware, is a professional social network for the career-minded (basically, what i always thought Facebook was going to be, but whatever). One of the nice many nice features of the site is the availability of discussion groups suited to our profession. I am a member of the following groups:

the eLearning Guild (yes, those guys)
Courseware Development
eLearn
Instructional Design & E-Learning Professional Group

What i find convenient about these is that you get a fairly global and experiential mix of input to questions asked. Some useful tool talk is usually batted around, keeping me in the loop (i'm kind of out of the to-and-fro of authoring tools and what-have-you in my current position). Perhaps the most useful feature of these groups is that i get a bi-weekly digest of the discussion activity, so that i can decide when and if i'm going to enter the fray.

Finally, there's the presence of job-seekers in the discussion groups. Job seekers do one important thing for me: describe their skills. The short descriptions make me think about how i would position myself in the same situation and whether my skills are as marketable. If there's something that is saleable that i think i need to know about, i usually find what i need.

SharePoint Learning Kit

2009-02-09T19:08:00.005-05:00

Only a few hours before my workday was unexpectedly cut short (gas leak ftw?), I asked our SharePoint architect about Semblio. As we got to talking about the usual (the future of Silverlight, the Expression Studio suite, etc), he revealed two things that I did not know:

Microsoft has an open source project hosting site (called codeplex). If you've ever spent any time on Sourceforge, you'll understand the purpose of such a site. I'm mostly just tickled that it exists.
SharePoint can act as an LCMS. My Microsoft-savvy co-worker turned me on to SharePoint Learning Kit, which is basically a SCORM 2004-compliant certified e-learning delivery and tracking application. By doing a bit of Googling, I see that I am at least a half a year late to the party (as ever).

Question: Is anyone using this?

Semblio?

2009-02-08T17:50:00.004-05:00

Came across this while clicking links on Cammy Bean's blog:

Now you can make your instructional materials even more valuable. Microsoft Semblio provides easy access to the power of Microsoft .NET and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) by tailoring the Microsoft development platform specifically to the education market.

Confused? Yeah, that's how that works.
Here's more:

Using Microsoft Semblio, you can create rich, immersive multimedia learning material that’s highly interactive and fosters exploratory learning that teachers can customize, and that promotes collaboration.

Well, that sounds like something.
Interested? Check it out.

how i (try to) keep up

2009-02-08T14:54:00.011-05:00

someone asked me the other day how i stay on top of e-learning and social media news.
the short answer is that i never feel like i do stay on top of things - i always feel like i'm way behind where i should be in tool/product knowledge, theory, current discussions, etc. i feel like i only find out about something really interesting or applicable after the irons have cooled a bit.
anyway, the following are ways that i use to try to stay up to date.

Blogs
i live in Google Reader for at least an hour a day.
here's what I got:

Twitter
i won't go into the specifics of how to use Twitter for learning (see this post for that), but suffice it to say that i get a lot out of my interactions on this microblogging platform.

the big question with Twitter, i think, is how to find people to follow - rather, how to find people who would make following worthwhile. Once again, Jane Hart has your back - this time, with a directory of about 750 learning professionals on Twitter.

(don't) use your words

2009-02-07T21:03:00.003-05:00

Apparently wordiness actually hurts learning.
Remember that the next time your SME wants to pack it in.

tips, tools, tricks and tales

2009-02-07T15:34:00.016-05:00

sorry for the delay in posting - posting to twitter seems to sap my urge to blog.
anyway, here's the news:

Tips

Mark Oehlert takes a stab at compiling the disparate components of our learning/training industry...
...whereas (in late 2007) Clive Shepherd took a look at the many faces of elearning (thank you pgsimoes!).
An online conference on improving traditional conferences. Meta? Yes. Funny? You bet. Useful? Yes, actually.
Actually here are more thoughts on the state of our industry conferences. Seems that TK09 got people thinking.
Tips for SharePoint Success? That sounds timely and useful. Have at it.
Use Gagne's 9 Events in your e-learning projects.
Learn yourself something about m-learning (and see Mickey!) at mLearn2009.
Think you need a chart? Find out which one.
Nine principles for excellence in web-based teaching? Yes, plz.

Tools

From Yammer to Twitter: an experiment. [via eContent]
UltraLearn! How can you *not* give this a try? I mean, really...ULTRA! (actually, it does sound kind of interesting, plus it has a trial overview.) [via Jane Hart]
Periodic Table of Metaphors. Yes, that's pretty much it. Pass it on.
More from Jane (she's quite prolific): Composica 4.0, a new social e-learning authoring system.
Articulate Studio 2009 reviewed [via Learning Rocks]
Prezi - the zooming editor for 'stunning presentations.' [via Jane Hart]
Virtual World Facet study. Pretty comprehensive.
Four tools for performing usability testing on the cheap.
Text-to-movie? Xtranormal creates animated movies with computer-generated voices and 3-D characters. Looks pretty interesting. [thanks, Christy Tucker!]

Tricks

Get a better view of your twitterspace, without installing anything.
eLearning Guil's trove of e-books of e-learning tips and tricks.
Using VMware for educational labs. Kind of cool, this idea of 'snapshots.'
Convert your PowerPoint presentation into an e-learning course (yeah, i know...)

Tales

An oldie but goodie from the Learning Circuits blog: the Campfire and the Sandlot.
David Pogue's Twitter experiment [via corporate elearning strategies and development]
Cammy Bean asks if instructional design degrees get wasted.
A cautionary tale that i can kind of relate to (which makes me feel kind of juvenile, frankly) [via Engaged Learning]
A Fair(y) Use Tale
Karl Kapp tells us what learning professionals can learn from the Pittburgh Steelers. I've only included this link because...well, it's funny.
A cool Animoto video raises copyright issues regarding educational remixes.

More good stuff I'm missing at TED

2009-02-07T15:17:00.006-05:00

Bill Gates on how to make a teacher great.
(thanks, elearningpost!)

free video manipulation apps

2009-02-06T11:55:00.005-05:00

A colleague just asked about ripping from legacy formats and then possibly burning to DVD or saving video in particular formats. May I present:

HandBrake [http://www.handbrake.fr/] is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows.
DVD Flick [http://www.dvdflick.net/] aims to be a simple but at the same time powerful DVD Authoring tool. It can take a number of video files stored on your computer and turn them into a DVD that will play back on your DVD player, Media Center or Home Cinema Set. You can add additional custom audio tracks, subtitles as well as a menu for easier navigation.

Here's an additional how-to for using DVD Flick (although, really, it's pretty easy).

jolicloud

2009-02-03T19:25:00.004-05:00

As you may know, I own an Acer Aspire One netbook and am dual-booting Windows XP and Ubuntu 8.10. I'm very satisfied, but lately...my eye has been wandering.

the 'crack cocaine of the training industry'

2009-01-31T18:01:00.008-05:00

As so often happens when i read the opinions of people smarter than me, Clark Aldrich just kind of made me lose my appetite:

...actual inspiration from inspirational examples, however, decays quickly. Audience members feel a buzz of good will, and then do nothing differently....Inspirational stories are the crack cocaine of the training industry.

Argh. He might have a point (especially as used in simulations) but as someone who is kind of on a power-of-narrative kick and pressing this at work, i find this particular statement kind of counterintuitive.

Question: Am I misunderstanding Mr. Aldrich?

Head out of the clouds?

2009-01-31T01:03:00.011-05:00

I never quite cottoned to ma.gnolia; del.icio.us (or delicious - whatever, Yahoo) is good enough for me, thank you very much. And don't even get me started on Furl.

That said, i can't help but feel for the people whose hours of compiling valued web bookmarks went up in smoke yesterday morning. Serious freakout material, that. I have two delicious accounts and if Yahoo pulled a SunRocket or something on me I can only say that I'd be extremely put out.

Question: in this age of gDrive anticipation and solid-state drive netbooks, how much of your you are you willing to entrust to the cloud?

tips, tools, tricks and (cautionary) tales

2009-01-30T23:16:00.017-05:00

I've been meaning to blog about many of these, but I've been busy (hacking up lungs, mostly):

Tips

Newsflash: people like stories.
Extensive list of open courseware projects from around the world. [via elearningpost]
Mark Simon tells us how not to design e-learning [via eLearning Weekly]

Tools

iPlotz: create navigable wireframes and mockups, share your ideas with others and manage project tasks. Maybe a competitor in the space that Balsamiq has been holding?
Clive gives us a rundown of Caspian's Thinking Worlds 3D world authoring tool.
Jay Cross talks about great technologies you could be using.
Jonathan Shoaf meditates on the merits of popular e-learning authoring tools...

Tricks

...and talks about Captivate and Lectora playing nice to ferry score results.
i'm obsessed. i will make the $99 SMART Board.

Tales

EdTech Posse podcast [thanks, shareski!]
Harold Jarche tells us to close the training department. Yes, he said that.
The BBC (yes, i know) presents Mi Vida Loca: how immersive language training might be achieved through episodic narrative. Everybody likes a mystery! [via Jane Hart]

UPDATE: User Experience Deliverables - read this, plz.

Closing the circuit

2009-01-24T00:36:00.000-05:00

As a learning professional and technology evangelist, i have been lately spending a lot of time ramping up my intake of learning theory, social media trends, technology uses, learning methods and tons of other advice from formidable education tweeps and their blogs. This has been great; my awareness has expanded to the point where I have become a bit of a social media/technology/learning theory apostle, witnessing to co-workers and friends with equal vigor (and relentlessness). I'm really enjoying being a connector.

Which brings me to this blog: the more i absorb, the more i find myself cornering my colleagues and friends with new (well, new to me) ideas about the abilities that advances in technology afford those of us who work in the business of learning. Mostly, i've just been peppering people with links, and this has to stop; this blog is an act of mercy on the inboxes of my friends and loved ones.