Knowledge and Learning In The News - 8/24/2005

In Asia, the Eyes Have It - wired magazine Asians and North Americans really do see the world differently. Shown a photograph, North American students of European background paid more attention to the object in the foreground of a scene, while students from China spent more time studying the background and taking in the whole scene, according to University of Michigan researchers. Offbeat Offsites -- Fast Company The New York Times reports today on new approaches to corporate team building. No longer will rope courses and trust games suffice. Today's corporate trainers are turning to cooking contests, drum circles, and dinner party-like mystery games. ICTs for Critical Thinking by wwwtools Although critical thinking is widely acclaimed as a Good Thing by educators, many are hard put to define it precisely. John Markoff - Technology Columnist and Author (podcast) by ITConversations How did the the licensing of the transistor Silicon Valley? Did Moore's Law come from Gordon Moore or was it borrowed from somone else else? And how did LSD and the Vietnam war help start the PC revolution? Part two is here. A group of one by Dave Gray A group is its own worst enemy. Why "Made in China" is good news for the U.S. by Salon The boom in the Chinese microchip industry has Americans worrying about lost jobs and national security. We should be praising it as a model of how globalization is supposed to work.

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 8/21/2005

China and India a special report by BusinessWeek Rarely has the rise of two relatively poor countries been watched with such awe, hope, and trepidation. Where are India and China headed, and what does it mean to you? Learning about stereotypes reduces their impact by Cognitive Daily "Boys are better at math" is a stereotype decades in the making, and it has in some cases been borne out by testing measures such as the SAT. The stereotype has been around so long that many wonder whether the stereotype is the effect or the cause of any actual differences in math ability. John Seely Brown - Podcast (37 min) by ITConversations Using the example of Toyota's relationship with suppliers as a starting point, JSB covers four businesses where innovation is driven through interaction between suppliers and where the very nature of the traditional top-down business model is challenged. China Tries to Wipe Internet Icon from Web by Red Nova The government has created a special Internet police force believed responsible for shutting down domestic sites posting politically unacceptable content, blocking some foreign news sites and jailing several people for their online postings.

Knowledge and Learning In The News

Lapping up knowledge by The Arizona Republic Out with the textbooks. In with the laptops. When Empire High School opened last month, it made history. The Tucson school didn't buy a single textbook. Instead, it equipped every student with a laptop computer. Post-Literacy by Clark Aldrich We are going to have to begin talking about post-literacy. The irony is that as we explore the topic, our love for reading and writing will become more heightened, not less. The Cat That Came Back by Gary L. Neilson and Bruce A. Pasternack To change an organization effectively, concentrate on the deliberate design of four key organizational building blocks: Decision Rights, Information, Motivators, & Structure. Knowledge: The Essence of Meta Data: Organization and Classification Begins at Home by R. Todd Stephens, Ph.D. I was classifying my thoughts on the future of technology under "The Future of Technology" which sounds reasonable. However, everyone else was using globalization, future, technology or innovation.

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 8/13/2005

Knowledge and Information, are they the same? by Albert Ip Information is manifestation of someone's part knowledge. Knowledge is all the accumulated experience I have since my birth. How Not to Connect on LinkedIn by Dave Taylor This is a general topic, actually, not one specific to LinkedIn, and I'll call it "how to network electronically" for lack of a better phrase. Innovation, By the Book by Kevin Ohannessian Books are changing their format. Publishers are catering to increasingly far-sighted baby boomers by enlarging print size. Connecting with the Flow by Jay Cross I used to think that things and facts in isolation had meaning, but in an age of relativity and the uncertainty principle, as I recognize the importance of stories, narrative, and context, I realize that when you get to the center, there's nothing there. Relationships, how things are tied together, are what matters. Flow by Donald Clark Dutch composer Simeon ten Holt wrote Canto Ostinato for various instruments and flexible duration. Ten Holt uses repetition and minimalist permutations to create an original, evolving work with ever-shifting moments. What if VisiCalc had been patented? by Dan Bricklin I'm not against patents in general (they are good for some industries, I guess), but I do have real problems with how they are affecting the software industry which has other means of protection and incentive that have proven successful to society.

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 8/11/2005

Dan Pink Interview - author of "A Whole Mind - Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age" (Podcast) Elliott Masie interviews Dan Pink on his latest and provocative book. Dan Pink offers a fresh look at what it takes for individuals and organizations to excel. Social Network Analysis: What to Map A lot of work has been done in the past couple of years in the field of Social Network Analysis (SNA) -- the assessment of the real person-to-person links in and between organizations and groups, as distinct from the ones that you might expect to see from the 'official' organization charts. The Knowledge Sharing Toolkit Governments and business gurus alike assert that knowledge is the key to innovation, economic growth and commercial success, and construction needs to catch up with other industries in its use of knowledge management.

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 8/10/2005

Visual Literacy Incongruities intensify meaning by creating contrasts or juxtapositions that stimulate the emotions, the intellect and imagination. A good way to build incongruous ideas into your images is to conceive images in terms of opposites and contradictions. Principles of Distributed Representation The changing conception of knowledge, the idea of knowing (and learning) as a network phenomenon, and how that changes how we should approach metadata and in particular learning object metadata. Folksonomy: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Mess (podcast) Discussion of variouss topics important to folksonomies. Surprising aspects of the implementation of tagging in various environments and approaches to balancing the needs of the system to the desires of the user are discussed from various viewpoints.

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 8/08/2005

New York Times Op Ed on the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki My great-grandmother and my grandmother faced the occupiers alone, having ordered the children to hide. The Japanese had been warned that the invading barbarians would rape and pillage. My great-grandmother, a battle-scarred early feminist, hissed, "Get your filthy barbarian shoes off of my floor!" The interpreter refused to interpret. The officer in command insisted. Upon hearing the translation from the red-faced interpreter, the officer sat on the floor and removed his boots, instructing his men to do the same. He apologized to my great-grandmother and grandmother. An Anniversary to Forget We Media: How audiences are shaping the future of news and information n his 1995 book Being Digital, Nicholas Negroponte predicted that in the future, online news would give readers the ability to choose only the topics and sources that interested them. Waiting for "Eye"-Pod The rumors of a video iPod gained new momentum on July 18 with a Wall Street Journal article reporting that Apple was in discussions with music labels and other companies to license music videos for its new device.

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 8/06/2005

The Collapse of Globalism John Ralston Saul's new book The Collapse of Globalism is saying what most economists have been afraid to say: The emperor has no clothes. Performance management systems are about structure, transparency and fairness The only thing important in the performance management process is the alignment of individual employees to their job roles and that means (just so we have it clear) - the alignment of any job role to their supervisor's job role, the supervisor's alignment of their job role to their manager's job role, the managers job role alignment to the appropriate Directors portfolio of responsibilities, and last but by no means least, the Directors Job Role (portfolio of responsibilities) alignment to the outcomes desired in the organisations current business plan. Interview: Jerry Wennstrom on Learning The author is trying to explain the source of learning and creativity, and finds it in the removal of the self from society and in the listening to the inner voice, surrendering ourselves to the mystery of the self and the world. Yawn Over the Yuan (video) China dropped one currency peg for another to buy some time.

Knowledge and Learning In The News

Delving into the Mystery of Customer Satisfaction: A Toyota for the Retail Market? It started out as an academic puzzle of sorts. The researchers already knew that in the airline industry, customers and employees revere Southwest Airlines. With computers, Dell stands out as superior in customer satisfaction. And Toyota remains the company to emulate in the automobile industry. But when it comes to the retail industry, what company sets the standards for customer and employee satisfaction? How One Airline Flew Back to the Black While Industry Rivals Struggle Two American Airlines mechanics didn't like having to toss out $200 drill bits once they got dull. So they rigged up some old machine parts - a vacuum-cleaner belt and a motor from a science project - and built "Thumping Ralph." It's essentially a drill-bit sharpener that allows them to get more use out of each bit. The savings, according to the company: as much as $300,000 a year. From the maintenance floor to the cockpit, American Airlines is daily scouring operations to increase efficiency and find even the smallest cost savings. It's paid off: Last month, the company announced its first profit in almost five years. There's No Content In Content Is it just me, or does anyone else have a problem with content? By that I mean the use of the word "content" to describe anything that gets created and/or recorded somewhere in an organization. The problem with content is that there is no content to it. Managing content is like managing. . your metaphor goes here. Death by Powerpoint Try asking someone not to use PowerPoint for their presentation. Watch them squirm. The rise in blood pressure is palpable. Beads of perspiration form. You become a threat to all civilization. Preferred Coworkers Fancy this: "An overwhelming majority of people would rather work with a less-skilled but likeable person than a more-competent jerk." What Is Knowledge Management - Knowing What We Know? Research literature shows a strong link between knowledge management and the creation of a sustainable competitive advantage, because of the tacit nature of an organisation's knowledge Why We Hate HR In a knowledge economy, companies with the best talent win. And finding, nurturing, and developing that talent should be one of the most important tasks in a corporation. So why does human resources do such a bad job -- and how can we fix it?

Knowledge and Learning In The News

Going Home We have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero path. It's All About Leadership! Leadership is not about power or position, but the power of positive influence regardless of position. MySQL Users Conference (podcast) Building a system that is capable of handling one billion transactions a day is easier than it sounds. That is Adam Bosworth's view and he should know because he works for a company that has managed to achieve this level of scale on a simple architecture based on commodity hardware and simple brute force algorithms. Long, Hard Road From Here To Performance-Based Pay At a recent panel discussion on the Pentagon's plan to jettison current pay practices and set up a pay-for-performance system, the first questioner noted that the changes would give added responsibilities to managers and asked whether managers would get extra compensation for the extra work.