Knowledge and Learning In The News - 01/28/2007

Freak-Freakonomics - Ariel Rubinstein
A review of Freakonomics.

5 Principles of Innovation - The Practice of Leadership

• Five principles that give life to the process of innovation:
• Innovation starts when people convert problems to ideas
• Innovation needs a system
• Passion is the fuel, and pain is the hidden ingredient
• Co-locating drives effective exchange
• Differences should be leverage

mLearning Info - Educational Concepts
From a pedagogical perspective, mobile learning supports a new dimension in the educational process.

Exploring Creativity - Sorrow of the Kelpie
The fascination of mathematics and music, has created many forms of complex sound, that touches many. To say that Bach, who created the modern tonal scale, was not creative or a musical genius, would be to downplay the mathematical accomplishment. An accomplishment, that would never have happened, if the creative exploration was not at the crux of his mission.

Comment: The Web 2.0 long tail - iTnews
The social networking phenomenon is upon us, and it seems that half the world (in reality, less than one sixth) is instant messaging, blogging, wiki-ing and generally collaborating and communicating in new and exciting ways.

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 01/23/2007

'T-shaped' Thought Key to Innovation - The Korea Times
To create innovate products, we have to secure insights not only into the products and but also into their business opportunities by having an observant and empathetic view of the world, rather than 'I-types' who have skills in the relevant technologies but don't know much about market trends or clients.

How The Brain Rewires Itself
The doctrine of the unchanging human brain has had profound ramifications. For one thing, it lowered expectations about the value of rehabilitation for adults who had suffered brain damage from a stroke or about the possibility of fixing the pathological wiring that underlies psychiatric diseases. But research in the past few years has overthrown the dogma. Via elearnspace.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do and Other Factors Impact That Training Program ROI... - The Boggs e-Learning Chronicle
Senior executives more often than not have overly high expectations of their training managers, constantly demanding they turn out empowered leaders and developing future leaders, however, these same leaders often set a bad example for other employees by refusing to attend the training, and show no interest in sharing responsibility for ensuring training is valued and recognized within their company.

Is Wikipedia a black hole? - Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog
Wikipedia gets valuable backlinks from all over the web, in huge quantity; this is what makes Wikipedia rank so well -- but as of now, they're not giving any of this back. Wikipedia is something of a black hole on the Net -- it sucks up vast quantities of link energy but never releases any.

Investing in Informal Learning - The Learning Circuits Blog
Estimates of employer investments in workplace training hover around $210 billion annually. Of that, about $30 billion is spent on formal training, while the rest, $180 billion is spent on informal, or on-the-job training. Thus, informal/on-the-job learning gets 86% of all learning investments, which leaves 14% for formal learning programs.

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 01/21/2007

The Moving or the Still Image? - Apple Science
We might be missing some important observations if we only look at "moving pictures. If we study one frame next to another, as we may here in this grid, we might get to see "more" in a way. We can compare one moment to the next and truly see more of what's going on. A related article by Will Thalheimer - Research Brief: Animations versus Static Paper-based Diagrams.

Wikis are Not Knowledge Management Tools - Zoli's Blog
The real story is not about a better tool, but being able to work differently. When wikis are truly embraced in the enterprise, they don't just make KM easier; they put it out of it's misery. Yes, that's right, the wiki is the end of Knowledge Management as we know it.

Strange Attractor - Corante
In the past, the media acted as gatekeepers. They were the ones that went to the movie previews and told us which ones were good or crap. They were the ones who went to all the gigs and told us which bands were cool or rubbish. But we don't need gatekeepers anymore.

Universal Leonardo - Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design
A highly interactive site on Leonardo da Vinci.

Innovation: U.S. in league of its own - InTech
The study used several categories: institutions and policies; infrastructure; human capacity; technological sophistication; and business markets and capital. It also factored in nations' knowledge, competitiveness, and wealth.

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 01/17/2007

When New Ideas Are Bad for Innovation - Business Week
What is especially impressive about Apple's feat is that [Apple] did it with an R&D spend that is one-tenth the size of Microsoft's annual spend, and that they did it during a period of otherwise flat industry performance.

Web 2.0: Dog or Tail
Is Web 2.0 the next Long Tail or a dog? Related links: The Long Tail and B2B.

Towards A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods for Management - VISUAL-LITERACY
You have seen the Visualization Table, now read the paper behind it. Be sure to check out their other maps.

Finding Collective Capacities - How to Save the World
The problem is, we tend to gravitate towards like minds, people who think like we do, have the values we have, and to some extent have developed the skills and capacities we have. That doesn't bode well for diversity.

Nardellli's Tear-Down Job
Don't confuse activity with accomplishment. And mindlessly slashing staff without considering the big-picture perspective is frequently just that—lots of action that is more show than strategy and, ultimately, may hurt the operation more than it helps.

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 01/16/2007

"Mind" versus "Concept" Mapping versus Lev Vygotsky (& Lenin too) - Life of Riley: Ratblog Radio Network
The mind isn't being mapped -- the concept is being formed. The difference between concept maps and mind maps is that a mind map has only one main concept, while a concept map may have several. This comes down to the point that a mind map can be represented as a tree, while a concept map may need a network representation.

Difference and Friction - Edge Perspectives
Diversity trumps ability: random collections of intelligent problem solvers can outperform collections of the best individual problem-solvers.

The Curse of Knowledge - Why Communication at Work Is Sometimes Difficult - Business Pundit
Newton asked participants to tap the rhythm of a well-known tune. The tappers predicted that listeners would be able to identify the songs 50 percent of the time, whereas in reality the listeners could only figure out the tune about 3 percent of the time. The reason for the disconnect, Kruger says, is that tappers would inevitably "hear" the whole, orchestrated tune in their minds as they tapped, whereas listeners heard only an irregular series of taps.

Invoking innovation: moving beyond serendipity - sift every thing
A large part of brilliance is inspiration triggered by a convergence of information, creativity, and insight. But here's the hitch: innovative brilliance is still fortuitous, it's basically an accident.

Survey: Employers Plan to Raise Diversity Training Spending This Year - Chief Learning Officer
More than 20 percent of employers aim to increase the money they spend of diversity and inclusion training in 2007, according to a survey by Novations Group.

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 01/14/2007

Entering a dark age of innovation - Is this thing on?
A study by Jonathan Huebner showing that the rate of technological innovation is slowing down, and that by this rate we will be down to the Dark Ages level by 2024 (a curiously precise prediction, but presumably by comparing the technological advances of the millennium 500-1500 with the current trend).

Network-enabled apprenticeship - Informal Learning Blog
People who capture their work online, in words or multimedia, can function as remote mentors and teachers, although Jon admits that the tentative nature of web relations is essentially different from an apprentice's devotion to a master.

Five Steps To Multimedia Reporting - Multimedia Reporting and Convergence
Learn how to do multimedia stories. Novices, start with "Choosing a Story" icon below. Via Innovation in College Media.

Lessons From Home Depot's Bob Nardelli--Why Command And Control Is So Bad Business Week
The truth is that in the new global businss culture, process controls and metrics are critical to any big company but they are now sediment, one of the things that is commoditized and laid down on the corporate structure to make way for the discipline and process of innovation. Via Anecdote.

50 Things to do with Google Maps Mashups - Google Maps Mania
Newly introduced mapping applications can be useful in your everyday life. Via Micro Persuasion.

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 01/13/2007

What do textbooks look like when knowledge is a verb? - Artichoke
The key point to remember is that Gilbert describes 21st Century "knowledge as a verb". It seems knowledge is no longer a noun, it has something she calls "performativity" - or a "what it can do-ness."

Why a Quick Look Can Be Better than a Deep Study - Scientific American
Very early on in processing you've got access to that information that then gets hidden by that larger context. It points toward different stages in the visual process where different bits of information become available at different times.

Blogging to Learn and Learning to Blog - eLearn Magazine
Blogs, in and of themselves, are just a communication mechanism, but blogs that follow the above guidelines are easier to create since some structure is provided. They help promote informal learning since information is better organized and more useful for others.

Learning with Handheld Technologies Handbook - Mobile Learning
Futurelab, a non-profit U.K. based organisation, who previously published one of the best literature reviews of mobile learning, have now published a handbook of recommendations for mobile learning approaches - including implementation ideas and case studies.

Making the Grade - Online Education in the United States, 2006 - The Learned Man
Making the Grade: Online Education in the United States, 2006 represents the fourth annual report on the state of online learning in U.S. higher education. This study, is aimed at answering some of the fundamental questions about the nature and extent of online education.

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 01/12/2007

The Heart of the Learning 2.0 Matter - Training Day
One of the key hurdles companies fear when implementing collaborative learning environments has been concern over the accuracy/validity of information. But those fears should also be tempered with a realistic counterpoint, similar to what was profiled in Time: people with valid information to share and a forum by which to easily share it will consistently rise to the occasion.

Our Most Powerful Engine of Production - TCS Daily
More and more, economists came to see that it was knowledge that made the difference in modern societies--e.g., in software, drugs, industrial processes, biotechnology and other parts of the economy where the upfront costs were large, the payoffs enormous and the benefits widespread.

m-Learning Device is Coming: Apple iPhone - Will at Work Learning
"Everybody hates their phone," Jobs says, "and that's not a good thing. And there's an opportunity there." To Jobs's perfectionist eyes, phones are broken. Jobs likes things that are broken. It means he can make something that isn't and sell it to you for a premium price. This brilliant business analysis ought to relate to our industry as well. What's out there in the training-and-development, e-learning, learning-and-performance field that is broken? What can we fix? What can we get people to actually pay for?

Lasse Gjertsen - You Tube
The way to mastery is not always through practice, but sometimes through excellent editing (although I imagine that the editing does take some practice, or at least a lot of trial-and-error).

Wikis evolve as collaboration tools - InfoWorld
Content management systems usually won't work as collaboration tools. Although a CMS does ease content creation, the resulting Web sites have rigid navigation and formal publishing workflows. Wikis, on the other hand, empower users to create new pages ad hoc as well as create links easily within the content.

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 01/11/2007

Learning Circuits has posted its Big Question of the Month for January: "What are the trade offs between quality learning programs and rapid e-learning and how do you decide?" Thus, today's links will focus on that theme. . .

Exploring the Definition of "Rapid e-Learning" - The eLearning Guild
Does the term refer to A) fast, and perhaps cheap, development of e-Learning applications, or B) methods that increase the speed at which people learn, or C) technologies that speed up the connection between SMEs and learners, or D) services that enable organizations to add e-Learning offerings to their online curriculum quickly?

Rapid eLearning - Learnability Matters
A case study about Kern's foray into rapid eLearning. The case study also compares requirements vis-a-vis Traditional eLearning (quality learning program).

Simple Performance Improvement. Check the Clock. - Will at Work Learning
Research can uncover insights that would otherwise be overlooked.

ISD at Warp Speed - Don Clark
In the The New ISD by Ruth Clark, she rebuts the claims that ISD is dead. The author argues that ISD is based on similar system methodologies used in other professions and in addition, it is based on science. She gives several ideas for bringing ISD up to date.

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 01/07/2007

Web Trend Map 2007 - IA Three fun Internet overviews:

• The 50 loudest websites in 2006 and what made them successful
• Internet 2007 Predictions
• 2007 Web Trend Map in postcard format, DIN A4 or DIN A3 (PDF).

Via Micro Persuasion.

The new new journalism - Nicholas Carr
At first, I admit, I didn't "get it." It seemed like illiterate mush. But then I realized I was looking at the article through eyes corrupted by years of paying attention to the "main stream media." What I had thought were signs of a broken educational system - the seemingly random placement of commas, the spastic syntax, the obnoxious overuse of quotation marks, the goofy misspelling of "Jouralism" - were actually signs of the New Instantaneousness.

Out Of Work And Over The Hill - Forbes
Many companies prefer hiring younger employees. The reason? They view older workers as having less energy, along with high health and life insurance costs, higher salary expectations and an unwillingness to learn new technology, however, older workers require one-third less job training and stay in their jobs longer because they're not interested in ladder climbing.

Technology 'embraced by public' - BBC
"The adoption curve now is faster than ever. That early adopter segment of the market has grown."

Teens 'turn to social websites' - BBC
More than half of all net-using American teenagers use social networking sites, research suggests.

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 01/03/2007

Thinking, Linking, Doing - Creative Generlist
Filters make vast catalogues of music, books, advertising, and videos accessible and applicable to consumers and researchers, filters play an essential role in transforming ideas into creative endeavour.

Natural numbers, networks & communities - Cognitive Edge
The history of experts in science is not good when it comes to innovation. There are various ways in which this can be done. One of the most effective is to create a short term programme in which a group of experts are required to work with people on difficult or intractable problems with people from radically different backgrounds.

Blogs and wikis: ready for prime time? - KM World
Blogs began springing up more than a decade ago as a way for individuals to maintain online diaries, voice their opinions on politics and vent about consumer products. They proliferated rapidly, and thousands became millions. Tainted perhaps by the image of bloggers as gossipmongers, blogs were not taken seriously as enterprise applications until fairly recently. Now, a wide variety of enterprises are beginning to see the value of blogs in functions ranging from customer communication to tracking and reporting.

The "Dumbness of Crowds" - Creating Passionate Users
Read the book and you'll see just how significant and powerful the aggregation of individual knowledge really is, and how in the right circumstances with the right constraints, the wisdom found in that group CAN be smarter than the smartest individual in the group. But he never says the group itself becomes smarter when they work together to produce a result as a group.

iPOD RIPPER - Hammacher Schlemmer
A new universal iPOD RIPPER that "converts any type of video or audio, including cassette tapes, vinyl records, television shows, and VHS tapes" and puts it on your iPod -- no PC or Mac required. It comes with all the RCA, S-Video and other cables you need.