Collecting Knowledge and Learning - 02/27/2007

Gen C - Creative Generalist
Defining a generation that's not defined by age but rather by activity. Empowered, participative, and thriving on inter-relationships.

Gone Fischin' - dangerously irrelevant
A PowerPoint presentation (NOT the normal bullet-ridden kind) with some thought-provoking ideas about the world our learners are entering.

Cynicism and the Propaganda of KM - Green Chameleon
I just don't get it. Bloggers whose views I otherwise respect have been waxing lyrical about a slew of IBM and Lotus videos on KM released onto YouTube. One (original video here) in particular, made by Lotus in 2000 (back when KM was still chic) particularly gets my goat.

IT Confidential: What Web 2.0 Will Mean For Workforce 2.0 - InformationWeek
How will the way college students use Web 2.0 technologies affect corporate computing?

HTML Tags illustrated - haha.nu
Don't just make lists, rather give them some depth with pictures.

Collecting Knowledge and Learning - 02/24/2007

Invention vs. Innovation - The Technology Liberation Front
Apple doesn't invent much, but they do take technologies that are currently only available to people who are intimately familiar with gcc and vi, and makes them accessible to ordinary people.

It's information collaboration - Newsday
Research firm Gartner Inc., based in Stamford, Conn., is predicting that by 2009 half of companies worldwide will be using wikis, employers ranging from investment banks to book publishers to nonprofits are using them in a variety of ways.

A Digital Life - Scientific American Human memory can be maddeningly elusive. We stumble upon its limitations every day, when we forget a friend's telephone number, the name of a business contact or the title of a favorite book. However, new systems may allow people to record everything they see and hear--and even things they cannot sense--and to store all these data in a personal digital archive.

Does Wikinomics Have The Write Stuff? - Internet News
Wikis are all about collaboration, so it perhaps is no surprise that the authors of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, have set up a wiki, Wikinomics wiki, to go with the best-selling book. In keeping with the wiki tradition, the Wikinomics wiki, hosted by Socialtext, lets its readers have the final say.

Most Business Tech Pros Wary About Web 2.0 Tools In Business - InformationWeek
For all the mind-numbing buzz about Web. 2.0, most business collaboration and information sharing remains mired in endless e-mail strings and scheduled conference calls. More than half of business technology pros surveyed by InformationWeek are either skeptical about tools such as blogs, wikis, and online social networks, or they're willing but wary of adopting them. Also, see how the Goverment is using web 2.0 technology.

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 02/18/2007

February 18, 2007

The Numbers Behind Informal & Formal Learning - The Learning Circuits Blog
We are using the government's term of informal and formal learning -- if the money invested in learning falls under a training department's budget, it is counted as formal learning; if it falls only under payroll, then it is being counted as informal learning.

The Big Question - Learning Matters
The workplace is where learning happens. Furthermore, the work context itself it is where the motivation to learn or "teachable moment" becomes manifest (i.e. Oh crap I need to do this and I don't know how. . . let me Google it real quick).

Growing, changing, learning, creating - Harold Jarche
The conversation around informal learning has been heating up a bit lately, with Stephen Downes' critique of Jay Cross' mixer analogy, as well as Bill Brantley's attack on the entire book.

The more we learn about the world and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance. - Karl Popper Quote of the Day

Thoughts on HR and Creating a Culture of Innovation Within Companies - Workforce
"One problem in writing about HR and innovation is that HR people are the least creative people in the organization. HR is into rules. They are the ones who say, 'No, you can't break this rule.' This, of course, is the opposite of building a culture of creativity."

A Librarian's 2.0 Manifesto - Laura Cohen
Imagine this being a learning manifesto. Note that the video does contain brief nudity.

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 02/17/2007

Quote of the Day - by Bev Trayner in Phronesis
... the more work I do for online communities of practice, the more I have to meet people face-to-face.

Toward a Theory of Discontent: What can learning theory contribute to education? - Thoughts on learning, teaching, and computing
Bereiter ultimately wrestles with a question that is quite important in terms of explaining learning: How do people acquire knowledge that is more complex than what they already have? In other words, how do we learn things that are difficult to learn?

Identity 2.0 - Dick Hardt
This link is more about the presentation itself, rathen the content (Identy 2.0). I have heard on a few occasions that no more than 10 slides should used in a good presentation, yet this one uses far more and it is great! I also like the use of a simple white background, rather than the standard picture backgrounds that are used in most slide presentations -- it really makes the content pop-out at you, rather than being buried in a template of colors.

Innovation: "Geography is Destiny" - New Florence. New Renaissance.
C. Pascal Zackary who teaches at Stanford writes in NY Times about how Silicon Valley has bounced back with Google, Apple, Netflix and others leading global innovation. Clearly the Valley has overwhelming advantages, with enough VCs, angels, tech alums etc to keep nurturing a new generation of entrepreneurs.

Alternative Training: What Does a PSS Do? - Training Magazine
Training magazine asked Ted Gannan, CEO of Panviva, and developer of SupportPoint, to answer five frequently asked questions about whether a PSS is right for your company.

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 02/10/2007

Quote of the Day - Dave Snowden in the discussion group, Communities of Practice.
On deconstructing stories by explaining their meaning to gain trust -- "People are not stupid, they know when they are 'being told a story'. They prefer to synthesis raw material with their own context to create meaning and with that comes trust."

New Research Challenges Assumptions about Age, Emotional Intelligence - Chief Learning Officer
"We hypothesize that as people grow, they have more opportunity to learn about emotions and the gradations of emotions, increase emotional vocabulary and experience more and more varied life situations," Fariselli said. "Perhaps they accumulate more feedback and integrate this into greater self-awareness."

Students Who Believe Intelligence Can Be Developed Perform Better - Science Daily
Sudents who believed their intelligence could be developed placed a higher premium on learning, believed more in the power of effort, and had more constructive reactions to setbacks in school.

U.S. Organizations Spend $109.25 Billion on Employee Learning Annually, Says ASTD Report - learning Circuits
Employee learning and development is taking center stage as business leaders increasingly understand that a highly skilled, knowledgeable workforce is critical to achieving growth and success.

A review of knowledge management tools & techniques - theandb
Knowledge-management tools to organize, share and collaborate with others in business and private life.

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 02/05/2007

SAT 2.0 - Around the Corner v2
The power of self-motivated learners is finding knowledge in unlikely places. Side note - you can read the Demos study, "Their Space" that is cited in the post here.

Out of Context - Training Day
Most of us aren't aware of how powerful our surroundings and situation are in driving our behavior. How do you behave around your parents, spouse, children, clergy, old roommates, solicitors, etc.? You are a number of different people--ri ght?

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us - YouTube
A video response to Web 2.0. Via Informal Learning Blog.

Take back the monoculture metaphor - How the World Works
It's time for biodiversity advocates to reclaim the metaphor. The example of Microsoft in Korea shows how one bad decision a decade ago leads to unpredictable trouble years later, and how a profusion of operating systems, or interacting plants and animals, could be healthier for everyone than lonely dependence on just one. More complexity equals better. Via How to Save the World.

Moving into the long tail - growing changing learning creating
Challenges faced by the big providers and buyers of adult education.

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 02/01/2007

Mozzie - Google Video
A film about fluorocarbons, global warming and radical brain surgery... Combined live action and computer animation.

The real difference between the two 2.0s - KM World
The term Web 2.0 was invented to call our attention to what look like serious changes in the Web ecosystem. Even if it turns out that those changes are unconnected from one another, the term might still apply if collectively the Web now is so very different from how it was 10 years ago. But, we still want to know if anything connects those changes. Are there Trends with a capital T?

The Craft of Connection - strategy+business
Consider the variety of informal "communities of practice" found in most companies (and often across company boundaries), formed by people who collaborate to share best practices around a common vocation (or passion). Six Sigma "black belts" reach out to one another for help with complex statistical analyses. Field technicians share experiences and help one another troubleshoot initially intractable problems. Researchers tap other experts across the globe for specialized knowledge in developing new products. IT specialists collaborate to make disparate systems robust and complementary.

Making knowledge-informed decisions in a flat world - KM World
In the past, data and intuition could be treated separately. Not so in the enterprise of the future. In a flat world, you might get only one shot at a strategy, so it better be right. That means finding a way to synthesize the quantitative and the qualitative. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), first introduced in the 1970s by Dr. Thomas L. Saaty, provides an excellent approach for achieving a synthesis.

Is the universe actually made of information? - Wired
"It from bit" symbolizes the idea that the physical world has at bottom - at a very deep bottom , in most instances - an immaterial source and explanation; that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe ... Wheeler, 1990.
Otherwise put, every it -- every particle, every field of force, even the spacetime continuum itself -- derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely -- even in some cases indirectly -- from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes-or-no questions, binary choices, bits. - BioInformatics Glossary

Intelligent Disobedience - Here We Are. Now What?
Intelligent disobedience means that the dog must learn not only when to obey the commands of the blind person, but when to disobey commands that might put their owner in danger. What a wonderful concept.