Knowledge and Learning In The News - 9/30/2006

Most reliable search tool could be your librarian - ZD Net
Using the keywords "Martin Luther King," the first result on Google and AOL--whose search is powered by Google--and the second result on Microsoft Windows Live search is a Web site created by a white supremacists group that purports to provide "a true historical examination" of the civil rights leader.

Video Fixation - Forbes
YouTube is at the forefront of a new video revolution on the Net. The upstart's birth coincided with a magic moment in Internet history, when online video became cheap enough to give away. Broadcast television is over half a century old; cable TV is in its 30s. Now a new type of video network promises to radically change what we can watch, who can create it and who will profit.

The New Face of Learning - edutopia
What happens to traditional concepts of classrooms and teaching when we can now learn anything, anywhere, anytime? In this new interactive Web world, I have become a nomadic learner; I graze on knowledge. I find what I need when I need it. There is no linear curriculum to my learning, no formal structure other than the tools I use to connect to the people and sources that point me to what I need to know and learn, the same tools I use to then give back what I have discovered. via elearnspace

Knowledge-Based Systems Defined Insurance Networking News
The type of KBS that is often referred to as an "expert system" is technically known as a rule-based system. The expert systems moniker was attached to this technology because it was initially used to provide the same level (i.e., quality) of answers that a human expert would be expected to deliver for a given situation.

Despite inferiority, Zune likely to see modest success - Apple Insider
Although Microsoft Corp's forthcoming Zune digital media player is somewhat bulky and lacking appeal, its likely to see "some modest success" due to Microsoft's vast resources and the company's willingness take a loss with each unit it sells, one Wall Street analyst says.

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 9/28/2006

The New Science of Change - CIO
Nothing is more frustrating than trying to get people to alter the way they do things. New research reveals why it's so hard and suggests strategies to make it easier.

The Principals of Play - Metropolis
"At the time I was working on issues of language and literacy in education, and also the learning of content like math and science, where things get pretty complicated," Gee says. "I was struck by the fact that games are very complex, and often long and difficult. I wondered why kids spend so much time on tasks in these problem-solving spaces yet we have so much trouble getting them to do the same thing at school."

Picture Books - Learning Circuits
If the visual carries the same narrative weight as the text itself, then it often becomes superfluous, and if it replaces the text, then it almost seems to become a shorthand for language itself.

Ethics and Mobile Learning: Should We Worry? - e-Learning Queen
As a student, instructor, or e-learning institution administrator, are there ethical issues in mobile learning? If so, are they the same as ones one might expect in e-learning?

The Mobile Phone is a Knowledge Retention Tool - Green Chameleon
Should KM look for ways to keep connections intact when people leave the organization so that the knowledge is still fairly accessible, rather than to collect it all when they are around?

Danah Boyd on social networks - ibiblio
Danah Boyd, in a video, gives an in-depth talk on social networks and why people are using them.

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 9/26/2006

Modelling Excellence - A Lesson For HR In China - Online Recruitment
The video takes an arrangement of Pachebel's Canon in D and really pushes it to the limit. Jimmy Hendrix he is not. He's actually better.

Q & A with an Innovative Operator - MS Executive Circle
When I worked at [American Airlines subsidiary] Sabre, I spent $1 million on a CD-ROM project that failed. I was sure I would be fired. Instead, my boss said 'what did you learn? Let's sit down and talk about how not to do it again.'

Thoughts on Leadership Development - Gautam Ghosh
Business Leadership can be developed along three axes: Business, Functional, and Technical.

The Neuroscience of Leadership and Brain Fitness - SharpBrains
Leaders would benefit from engaging others in ways based on innate brain predispositions.

Buzzwords say all the wrong things - Signal vs. Noise
Buzzwords are often a mask. People who use them are covering up their ideas - or the lack thereof. They are overcompensating. They don't have anything substantial to say so they try to use impressive sounding words instead.

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 9/25/2006

The Skinny On Web 2.0 - Infomation Week
Web 2.0 is all the Web sites out there that get their value from the actions of users.

Techies hot on concept of 'wisdom of crowds,' but it has some pitfalls - USA Today
Internet types love sweeping ideas that come in the form of book titles that morph into catchphrases that can be dropped like little bombs into conversations to show how smart they are.

5 (Really) Hard Things about Using the Internet in Higher Education - eLearn Magazine
Using the Internet as an educational tool can be really hard—and it is not clear that things will get much easier in the near term. This article identifies five particular things that have particularly vexed my colleagues and me when using the Internet in our undergraduate and graduate classes.

Preserving the print metaphor - Howard Owens
Newspaper Web sites should not think of themselves as newspaper Web sites. They should forget the print product even exists, and concentrate on constant and continuous, Web-first, written-for-the-Web stories.

15 World-Widening Years - Information Week
In just 15 years, the World Wide Web has gone through many iterations: document-sharing tool for researchers, key source of news and information, shopping mecca, multimedia playground, and incredibly popular means of socializing and self-expression. How did the Web get so far so fast?

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 9/16/2006

How We Understand: Adding Meaning and Value to Information - How to Save the World
The word 'understand', which does not appear to have a precise counterpart in any other language, literally means "comprehend (=grasp) and appreciate(=be able to evaluate) sufficiently to pass on to others".

CEO Guide to Technology - Business Week
Networking technology gives companies a new set of tools for recruiting and customer service—but privacy questions remain.

Knowing Knowledge - George Siemens
Knowledge is changing. It develops faster, it changes more quickly, and it is more central to organizational success than in any other time in history.

Whiteboards Done Right - Training Magazine
During a brainstorming session or a training course, you can draw on it, write on it, erase it, but whiteboards have come a long way since their dry-erase days.

Improve performance through feedback and reinforcement - Pahrump Valley Times
When speaking about his employees, Henry Ford said, "Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is a success."

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 9/13/2006

The 19 Best Elearning Blogs - Articulate
From learning theories to content design, metadata to LMSes, survey data to industry trends, these blogs have it all.

Is Wikipedia 'knowledge' merely third party hearsay? - ZD Net
Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder, is a master communicator and salesman. The quality of the product that he touts, however, does not match the quality of his orations.

Wikipedia: Maybe It's Democratic After All - Business Week Insiders account for the vast majority of the edits. But it's the outsiders who provide nearly all of the content.

E-learning gets legal lessons in battle over patents - The Colonist
Stephen Downes,"I would say it's the phenomenon of multiple simultaneous inventions. It occurs through thousands of people at the same time, and it's ludicrous to imagine a race to the finish line."

Digital Divide? It's Still There - Wired
Many more white children use the internet than do Hispanic and black students, a reminder that going online is hardly a way of life for everyone.

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 9/10/2006

Mobile Internet Population Grows - ClickZ
The mobile Internet is growing, with over 34.6 million mobile users in June. That's according to the "U.S. Device Census Report for Q2 2006" from Telephia.

Building Partnerships Inside and Outside the Organization - Leader Values
Why the leader of the future will need to be a builder of partnerships. Six different types of partnerships will be explored: three inside the organization (direct reports, co-workers and managers) and three outside the organization (customers, suppliers and competitors).

Writely or Wrongly, a Failing Grade, So Far, for a Promising Tool - Dave Pollard
The collective work-product of Writely, like that of most wiki tools, is truly ugly unless some uber-editor comes in and does clean-up work. Same is true in my experience with eRooms, Lotus TeamRooms, and Groove.

A world of knowledge - Edmonton Journal
The nature -- and depth -- of what encyclopedias offer has evolved in the computer age. While old encyclopedias gather dust, the digital side of worldly knowledge is going through changes, too.

If You Really Want the Job, Read This - Business Week
From the obvious to the subtle, here are some good pointers to give you a leg up in that next interview. Includes slideshow.

Who invented e-learning? A patent dispute shakes up academic computing - chron.com
Critics say the patent claims nothing less than Blackboard's ownership of the very idea of e-learning. If allowed to stand, they say, it could quash the cooperation between academia and the private sector that has characterized e-learning for years and explains why virtual classrooms are so much better than they used to be. For more info, see Stephen's Web.

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 9/2/2006

iPods for Learning - Knowledge Jump
So, what is the iPods' value in a corporate setting? For example, you could place an audio and visual guide of your organization on an iPod and send new hires on a "tour" of their own (just like the Museum of Modern Art does), rather than having them wait for a class just to sit through a PowerPoint presentation. Or perhaps record a step-by-step procedure of a task, along with a few picture and/or notes to an iPod and use it as a training device.

Interview with Steve Rubel - Rocketboom
Joanne Colan from Rocketboom interviews blogger Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion.

Scrap Web 2.0, yes, but embrace Knowledge 2.0 surely - ZD Net
Increasingly a major portion of the human experiential store is being digitized and made available to anyone. More importantly, much of the new stuff made of, by, and for humans is being created digitally and made available to anyone. Sometimes it's free, mostly it's affordable.

Web 2.0 'knowledge': future of modern humanity? (I hope not) - ZD Net
How about Wikipedia, "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit"? Shall we accept its user-generated content as knowledge creation? How can we, when Wikipedia's own "About Wikipedia" page warns: "Because of recent vandalism, editing of this project page by anonymous or newly registered users is disabled."

Top Six Drivers for Business Success - Chief Learning Officer
Six "higher order" categories in order of relative importance to their firm's overall performance: agility and quality, strategy/leadership, technology, human capital, product and costs.