The learn tech blogs to watch - all in one handy place!

• Knowledge of facts like the state capital of California (Sacramento) or the name of the fifth hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean this year (Earl)
• Knowledge of techniques like how to change the default font in a web browser or how to play F# on a double bassoon
• Knowledge of consequences like what happens after you open a door marked "Fire Exit Only" or after you drive a car when the fuel gauge already reads "empty"
• Knowledge of patterns like recognizing the signs that it's nighttime in your time zone or winter in your hemisphere

• Knowledge of moral imperatives to obey like the "right way" to act or "the only" ethical approach to a situation
• Knowledge of stances to adopt like the opinionated positions argued by political candidates or the selective claims made by attorneys during courtroom proceedings
• Knowledge of theories to embrace like why the current global recession is persisting or for why the college dropout rate is increasing
• Knowledge of recommendations to follow like an advised change in a strategy to get different results or a suggested change in a diagnosis to alleviate chronic symptoms

1. I question whether all the information I present is the acceptable which says that any defensiveness on the receiving end is completely unjustified?
2. I wonder if I am being shown something I can change when it appears that I have provoked my audience to become closed minded?
3. I question whether I'm failing to make a distinction between information that is easy to accept and information that is likely to be found objectionable?
4. I wonder what alternatives there are to telling people what they need to know which might open their minds and lower their defenses?
5. I question whether people can appreciate being guided to their own realizations instead of getting bombarded by a sage on stage?
6. I wonder if my presentation strategy is actually too straightforward which suggests that I could take a more indirect approach?

Yesterday I attended Lectures: Dead and Alive, The 2010 Tucker Talk, delivered by Dr. Bruce Robertson, Professor of Classics, who asked, “In an age of instant online videos, why do people still travel thousands of miles to hear a public presentation? Why are lectures so improbably still ‘alive’?”

Bruce is an energetic speaker and he gave an excellent presentation, without slides, that kept the audience’s attention, in spite of the extreme heat and humidity in the auditorium. Bruce said that the lecture is a grand and living thing and noted how the rapt attention of others focused on a single presenter can induce a higher degree of focus. We’ve all heard of or perhaps witnessed people who can electrify a room. Bruce explained how lectures can help us to experience the sublime, enabling the contemplation of otherwise hidden natural order, and this is what teaching should offer. He admitted that the lecture as mere knowledge dissemination, in this age of wikipedia, is dead. Good lectures excite and inspire. His lecture reminded me of the article Love on Campus.

One of the comments after the talk was that the university continues to value the lecture.

This morning I attended six presentations on research activities. Presentation styles varied widely and included poor slide design with multiple bullet points, counterbalanced by unbounded enthusiasm for the research area. No presentation had the elegance of Bruce’s lecture and I would wager that there is one major reason why not – PRACTICE. Good lectures require practice, something few of us have, or make, time for unless it’s a prestigious speech. I know that my father-in-law, with 30 years of university teaching experience, still rehearsed each of his lectures, including those to first year students. I think he was an anomaly.

Today, several of the presentations went over the allotted time. I would again attribute this to the lack of practice. The question that I now ask is: if you are going to lecture, is it worth doing if it isn’t done well? Given that most lectures range from 45 minutes to an hour and a half, it might be better to create some good notes and have a Q&A session instead. If people run out of questions before the allotted time, just stop. A lecture poorly done offers few escape options; one must plod on to the end.

The TED Talks have shown how powerful a good lecture (presentation) can be. This is what I strive for but have yet to achieve. However, TED has some pretty strict rules, which should be considered before choosing the lecture as teaching mode.

The TED Commandments

These 10 tips are given to all TED Conference speakers as they prepare their TEDTalks.

1. Dream big. Strive to create the best talk you have ever given. Reveal something never seen before. Do something the audience will remember forever. Share an idea that could change the world.

2. Show us the real you. Share your passions, your dreams … and also your fears. Be vulnerable. Speak of failure as well as success.

3. Make the complex plain. Don’t try to dazzle intellectually. Don’t speak in abstractions. Explain! Give examples. Tell stories. Be specific.

4. Connect with people’s emotions. Make us laugh! Make us cry!

5. Don’t flaunt your ego. Don’t boast. It’s the surest way to switch everyone off.

6. No selling from the stage! Unless we have specifically asked you to, do not talk about your company or organization. And don’t even think about pitching your products or services or asking for funding from stage.

7. Feel free to comment on other speakers’ talks, to praise or to criticize. Controversy energizes! Enthusiastic endorsement is powerful!

8. Don’t read your talk. Notes are fine. But if the choice is between reading or rambling, then read!

9. End your talk on time. Doing otherwise is to steal time from the people that follow you. We won’t allow it.

10. Rehearse your talk in front of a trusted friend … for timing, for clarity, for impact.

If these guidelines cannot be met, then perhaps the lecture is not the best format.

—

BTW, the title comes from this video.

I’ve heard of SNAPP before – ” software tool that allows users to visualize the network of interactions resulting from discussion forum posts and replies” – but decided to play around with it today. This is a good example of a fairly simple, light-weight tool to analyze social interactions in an LMS like Moodle, Blackboard, or Desire2Learn. The process is simple: install a simple bookmarklet in your browser, go to your LMS, select the discussion forum that you want to analyze, and then activate the SNAPP plugin. SNAPP does its analysis and posts the results on the bottom of your browser window. The analysis isn’t very comprehensive, but does provide frequency of posts and social network structure. Greater analysis of the nature of interaction (i.e quality, not only quantity) through language/concept analysis seems like a logical next step. The best part of the tool is that it’s under the control of the educator (or learner). It’s simple, easy to install, and could provide useful insight into interactions. If you want to try it, download SNAPP and head to the introduction forum (an open forum, no login required) from CCK08 and see how it works.
What are you using for light-weight analysis of student learning or content?

Yesterday Taleo, the largest talent management software company, announced that it was acquiring Learn.com for $125 million. Here is the core of the announcement:

Taleo Corporation, the leading provider of on-demand talent management solutions, today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire strategic partner Learn.com, Inc. for approximately $125 million in cash. With the acquisition, Taleo will extend its Talent Management suite, becoming the only public vendor to offer best-in-class solutions across the four critical components of a talent-optimized organization: recruiting management to source, assess and acquire talent; performance management to establish goals and create career and succession plans; compensation management to establish a true “pay-for-performance” process between corporate objectives and individuals’ contributions; and now learning management to support social and formal development. (GW)

Reni Gorman points out that the use of microblogging in education is a recent area of interest compared to the uses of microblogging as a communication channel for news or marketing.

In a literature review on microblogging, learning and performance in the workplace, she explains that the research around microblogging tools like Twitter is directed towards using such tools as fostering informal learning and staying in touch with a support group to foster lifelong learning.  She states however that research that examines the potential of microblogs with regard to learning and performance in the workplace is currently lacking and proposes a table of contents for a study.

Interestingly enough, Workplace Learning Today blogger Richard Nantel blogged about A Framework for How to Use Twitter in the Classroom just a few days ago, so perhaps the interest is growing in this area. (KS)

Literature Review: Microblogs and Learning and Performance in the Workplace | Renata (Reni) Gorman’s Blog | 1 September 2010

This book “Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities” — reviewed by the Wall Street Journal –  is about higher education, and this blog is about workplace learning.

But the issues raised are so intriguing — basically that economics and technology are pressuring the fundamental paradigms of higher ed — that it’s worth noting.

Also, there is some bit of connection between higher ed and workplace learning: some of the thought leaders in workplace learning are professors or have advanced academic degrees. The two arenas share some DNA.

According to the book review, the author Mark C. Taylor suggests things like:

• Do away with tenure.
• Change the basic structure of college teaching.
• Use technology to have professors teach at multiple schools.
• Make the lectures of big-name professors available for a fee.
• Have more interdisciplinary study.
• Don’t have every department at every school.

These are pretty wild ideas and your reaction probably depends on where you sit.

But the ideas are food for thought — and workplace learning will face the same radical questions (if it isn’t already).

By the way, this 2009 New York Times op-ed by the same author, “End the University as We Know It,” starts with the most memorable sentence you’ll read today:

“Graduate education is the Detroit of higher learning.”

(TW)

Bookshelf: Reading, Writing, Radical Change | 31 August 2010

Michael Schrage describes how Tesco, a UK retailer, measures the potential benefits of any new idea. The idea must:

• Be good for customers
• Save the company money
• Make things simpler for staff

Congratulations to Tesco for “getting” the importance of simplicity and making it a top requirement for innovation. Most organizations are perpetually on a path of increasing complexity. Day-to-day operations and new products and services create the need for work-arounds that slow productivity. Support for old products and services often create more work than they’re worth.

Mr. Schrage believes training departments contribute to complexity:

Precisely because people know there’s an organizational training department, they don’t take extra efforts to take out the complications and complexities of their innovation. In the same way Hollywood productions say “We’ll fix it in post (production)” to compensate for a bad shot or bad acting, internal innovators and change champions shrug and say, “They’ll fix it in training and orientation.” Training’s very existence is used as an excuse not to further simplify. What’s more, the training department is happy to go along with the clunky complexity because that makes them more important. Training can argue, correctly, that nobody could effectively use the innovation if they hadn’t been fully trained. Instead of addressing the simplicity/complexity challenge, training effectively perpetuates it.

According to Michael Schrage, training departments help generate complexity since it drives the need for more training. (RN)

A Simpler Way to Make It Simple | Harvard Busienss Review | Michael Schrage | 1 September 2010

• Stop making a nuisance of yourself in ways that are testing others' patience
• Stop running over budget and behind schedule before we lose the customer, project or reputation we've worked hard to earn
• Stop violating the rules, policies and laws we all must obey
• Stop sabotaging your own success with your lack of ambition, organization and practice
• Stop making excuses and blaming others for not getting the job done
• Stop before you fall into that trap or you step onto that slippery slope
• Stop looking down on us as if you're better than the rest of us

1. exploring the limits and seeing how far they can push things before someone pushes back
2. waiting for someone whose been ignoring them to say something or show an interest in them for a change
3. begging for an argument or confrontation in order to experience themselves as confident, powerful and independent
4. showing off to boost their flagging confidence and to overcome some nagging insecurities
5. losing their perspective of the big issues they cannot impact while becoming obsessed with details they can control directly
6. antagonizing some deserving control freak, power tripper or bully who shows no empathy, genuine concern or compassion
7. trying prove themselves as equal or better than someone they admire and often imitate their approach to situations

This blog is one of ten finalists in the 2010 SA Blog Awards category: The Best Science and Technology Blog.  Thanks to all of you who nominated e4africa.

We are now in the voting phase – from today until 17 September 2010.  Each one of you is entitled to one vote per category per day.

The 2010 SA Blog Awards is a great idea – it encourages high quality blogs and showcase worthy ones.  I applaud the organizers and sponsors and wish to congratulate all the finalists in the different categories.

But there is one snag: as you go through the categories you’ll notice that none exists for education-related blogs (not to mention the sub-genre of technology-in-education blogs).

This is a gross oversight!

In other parts of the world blogs play a significant role in education: blogs for teachers, blogs by teachers, even blogs for and by learners.  In South Africa we still have a long way to go in motivating the education fraternity to take up blogs as teaching and learning tools.  Yet, some highly informative education blogs are to be found in the South African blogosphere and they too need to be showcased.

So, if you vote for e4africa, you will not only be voting for this blog – you will be adding volume to the appeal for greater recognition for the role of blogs in education.  Perhaps, if the call is load enough, the organizers of SA Blog Awards will create an Education category (and if we are fortunate, even a Technology-in-education category) in 2011.

How do you go about voting?  Follow these simple steps:

1. Click on the FINALIST – VOTE HERE icon on the right hand side of this page.
2. You will be taken to the 2010 SA Blog Awards voting page.  The system will know that you were taken there from e4africa.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the page, fill in your e-mail address, type in the security code and submit.
4. After a minute or so an e-mail will land in the in-box of the e-mail address you specified.  You must now click on the link indicated.  This is an important step to conclude your vote. This process may appear to be a bit long-winded, but is necessary to ensure that only real people vote
5. Remember, you can vote in this way once a day.  The more you vote, the greater the impact.

Thanks for your support – together we can make a difference in education!

Created by Kobus van Wyk using www.MakeBeliefsComix.com

When everything else fails, read the manual.  How often have you heard this?  Just goes to show how people in the main feel about manuals.  This is true of manuals of electronic equipment in general – cell phones, microwave ovens and yes, classroom technology too.

If you’ve ever opened a box and tried to master the item inside with the help of its manual, you will know how frustrating this can be.  There are several reasons for this:

•  Manuals tend to be written in technical terms that may be clear to a person with technical know-how, but frequently leave a lay person in the dark. 
• The writer of a manual may assume a certain level of expertise on the part of the reader and so explanations are pitched at a very high level – first time users find this difficult to follow. 
• The style of manuals is generally impersonal and uninviting. 
• If the item has been manufactured in the East, the manual will have been written originally in Chinese, Korean or Japanese – the translation is often not clear to a Westerner.

In spite of these unfriendly elements of manuals, they do have good uses:

•  A manual is a useful, quick reference when you have forgotten something or if you need a specific detail 
• It is model specific: the information will always be relevant to your particular piece of equipment. 
• The pictures and diagrams are useful to explain the different components and uses of the item. 

A manual may not be the best way to introduce you to technology, but it certainly is an excellent source of reference material to help you to use the device optimally.  If you consult it as a matter of course and not simply as a last resort, you’ll make life easier for yourself.

Fascinating video about how Ford is using Wi-Fi and apps to customize vehicles on the factory floor.

App-driven customization could also happen at your dealer’s or even in your driveway.

The customization can apply not just to the entertainment package in vehicles but also to other features and functions (anything determined by software — which is a lot).

This means of course that people will someday come to expect instantly customized learning…

(TW)

IDEO is one of my favorite companies. I am looking forward to their participation in Fast Company’s new website Co.Design. Their first contribution is a series of articles called Patterns which tries to look for emerging ideas and innovations before they actually become trends. The first article in that series is IDEO`s axioms for starting disruptive new businesses, written by IDEO staffer Colin Raney. The four axioms are:

1. Go early, go often
2. Learning by doing
3. Inspiration through constraint
4. Open to opportunity

The rest of the article are stories that illustrate the axioms. Check it out. (GW)

IDEO’s Axioms for Starting Disruptive New Businesses | Co.Design | Colin Raney | 24 August 2010

Futurist Ray Kurzweil’s name shows up in articles about a wide range of topics. Last month, I wrote about a debate raging on the Web regarding reverse engineering the human brain. Mr. Kurzweil believes we’ll soon be able to model the human brain and simulate it using about one million lines of computer code. Biologist PZ Myers disagrees.

Dr. Kurzweil has also dipped his toes into the world of e-book technology. He’s developed an application called Blio, which preserves the format of paper-based books when viewed on e-book readers.

According to Dr. Kurzweil, a challenge in the current e-book market is that “publishers will not give things with complex formats to these e-reader makers. They destroy the format.”

Blio preserves the original format, making it particularly attractive to publishers of things like cookbooks, how-to guides, schoolbooks, travel guides and children’s books.

The Blio eReader and bookstore will soon be available at blioreader.com. According to this Web site site, you’ll be able to try out the Blio eReader since the site will provide “access to more than a million free books and a huge library of today’s bestsellers.” The Blio eReader will provide the ability read e-books on tablets, smartphones, and other devices.

No word on the requirements to author Blio content. The site does say Blio supports XPS, PDF and ePub formats. (RN)

Ray Kurzweil Vows to Right E-Reader Wrongs | The New York Times | Ashlee Vance | 18 June 2010

I need your help. I’m working on a book about architecture, but not in the conventional sense. I’m looking at learning architects, those who design environments for learning in the workplace. I want to interview a cross-section of pioneering learning architects from across the world to try and ascertain their vision for learning and development at work and how successful they have been in implementing this within their organisations. In particular I’m interested in those who understand the importance of different forms of learning (experiential, on demand, non-formal, formal) and have been able to integrate these as a coherent and well-balanced strategy.

Who do you know who is doing (or has done) a great job of heading up an l&d team and who would not mind sharing a little of their success? I’d love to know.

In the meantime, here’s a little more explanation of what I mean by a learning architect:

A learning architect designs environments for learning. Like the architect who designs buildings, the learning architect will be responding to a specific brief:

• What is the nature of the learning requirement? What knowledge, skills and attitudes is the employer (the client) wishing to engender in the employees working within the business, division or department in question? How will this learning contribute to effective performance?
• What jobs are carried out in the target area? How many people are doing these jobs? What are these people like in terms of their demographics, prior learning, ability to learn independently, their motivation and preferences?
• Under what constraints must this learning take place? How geographically dispersed is the population? How much time and money is available? What equipment and facilities can be deployed to support the learning?

The learning architect also has a professional responsibility to their client. This requires them to be fully conversant with current thinking in terms of learning methods, acquainted with the latest learning media and up-to-date with developments in the science of learning. As none of these is intuitive and obvious, the client cannot be expected to have this expertise. And for this reason, it is neither sufficient nor excusable for the learning architect to act as order taker.

The responsibility of the learning architect is to their client. As with the architect of buildings, other motives can come into play – the desire to experiment and innovate, loyalty to the latest fads and fashions, the glamour and glitz of the awards ceremonies – but should they be tempted, they risk failing to meet the requirement within the given constraints.

'Architect' might sound like a grand title for someone other than a head of learning and development or what the Americans like to call a Chief Learning Officer, but remember that architects of buildings tackle small jobs like extensions as well as office blocks and whole housing estates. They start off working with other architects and they gain experience over time.

You don’t become a learning architect by calling yourself one; you also have to behave like one. An architect of buildings does not carry the bricks or paint the walls, although they do keep a watchful eye on these activities in case their plans need to be revised or updated. They don’t have to supervise every activity, but they do need to watch the numbers, so they can react if budgets and timeframes are being exceeded.

The learning architect does not need to directly facilitate learning or be present in all those situations in which learning might be taking place. However, they must know whether or not the learning that is occurring is in line with their plans and their client’s requirements, and that all this is happening at an acceptable speed and cost. And because the only constant in the modern workplace is change, they must be agile enough to respond to shifting requirements, new pressures and emerging opportunities.

As many theorists of innovation have noted, it’s difficult for mature established fields (and corporations, for that matter) to reinvent themselves. Change often comes from the outside. Once an organization has settled into a revenue stream that provides some security, it’s almost impossible for that organization to adopt approaches that harm or cannibalize that revenue stream (Blockbuster and video rentals, Microsoft and Office). Risk-taking is the domain of young companies and outsiders to a field. ReadWriteWeb presents five ways for tech companies to disrupt education. Suggestions: it should be free(mium), grassroots, 21st century learning & teaching, use open content, be open source. Can’t say I see that as being sufficient to disrupt education. Any solution that does that would need to:

1. Be based on a unit of influence that is at the control of each individual (i.e. connections not networks)
2. Scale social interactions (not only content) so large network learning occurs, but in a way that permits various group/collective sizes
3. Promote and benefit from learner autonomy, helping learners to building skills and capacity for ongoing learning
4. Use distributed, decentralized technical infrastructure (p2p not centralized)
5. Extensively use learning analytics, preferably blurring physical and virtual interactions
6. Use curriculum intelligently (linked data/semantic web) in order to provide learners with personal and adaptive paths
7. Allow information splicing so that flows can be adjusted and organized to reflect different learning and social tasks
8. Enable easy variance of contexts – or as my colleague Jon Dron states – “context switching”.
9. Offer varying levels of support and structure, under the control of the learner. If a subject is too challenging, learners can choose a structured learning path. Or, if learners prefer greater autonomy, more flexible paths can be adopted.
10. The system needs to learn from the learners (Hunch is a good example)
11. Integrate activities from various services so learners can centrally interact with data left in other services (Greplin)
12. Provide learners with the tools to connect and form learning networks with others in a course and across various disciplines (diversity exposure to ideas and connections needs to be intentional)

What are your thoughts? What type of tool, or functionality, do you think would disrupt education? What types of tools would teachers need to disrupt education?