Networks, Performance, Presentations, & Innovation

The guru is dead, long live the network - Inside Knowledge
There are networks out there that are extremely influential, that do not have a single thought leader behind them.

Performance support tool - Allison Rossett & Lisa Schafer
A free web based performance support tool to help you determine if performance support is right for your project. We present statements about your audience, purpose and context. From Rossett & Schafer's new book, "Job Aids and Performance Support: Moving From Knowledge in the Classroom to Knowledge Everywhere."

Flip charts as visual enhancers - Presentation Zen
I really like the idea of "getting off the grid," stepping away from the computer and "going analog" in the preparation stage of the presentation process. Large sheets of paper and marking pens - as "old school" as they may seem - can be wonderful, simple tools for presenting your ideas or recording the ideas of others.

Quote of the week "Innovation takes place, when many normal people get access to the required tools and resources." From Neurocode

Performance, Memory, Knowledge, & Web 2.0 - 4/22/2007

First Focus on Performance and Then Enable That - The Pursuing Performance Blog
I was at the forerunner of Motorola University, the Motorola Training & Education Center where I learned to better appreciate Education alongside Training. We had to Educate, not train, leaders about "future things" that were coming down the pike AT them. (NOTE: reposted to correct link)

Cognitive Load, Working Memory, and Effective Teaching - Eide Neurolearning Blog
For the classroom, what may seem to be redundant information in a presentation, may be necessary for students with different information processing preferences.

7 Little Known Ways To Drastically Improve Your Learning - ririan project
Unfortunately most people have pretty ineffective strategies for learning. Here are a couple tips for how to maximize the amount you learn so you can use more of it later.

Curiosity and the Mind - Eide Neurolearning Blog
When students were tested later, they did remember best the questions that they had indicated they were most curious about

Public Knowledge of Current Affairs Little Changed by News and Information Revolutions - The Pew Research Center Since the late 1980s, the emergence of 24-hour cable news as a dominant news source and the explosive growth of the internet have led to major changes in the American public's news habits. But a new nationwide survey finds that the coaxial and digital revolutions and attendant changes in news audience behaviors have had little impact on how much Americans know about national and international affairs.

Participation on Web 2.0 sites remains weak - Reuters
Web 2.0, a catchphrase for the latest generation of Web sites where users contribute their own text, pictures and video content, is far less participatory than commonly assumed, a study showed on Tuesday.

Implicit knowledge in complex system control - myowelt
With longer experience of system control, subjects tend to show better problem solving abiliities without showing an increase in verbalizable knowledge.

Presentations, Adapters, Performance, PowerPoint - 4/18/2007

The first-ever User Generated Presentation - Social Media Group
The idea behind it was to bring the principles of social media to the traditional presentation format - rather that having me (or anyone else) arbitrarily decide what information the audience required on the topic of social media, I let them pull what they wanted.

Interview with Thomas Friedman - Flattening World Challenges Imagination - Yale Global
Explainers - when the world gets this complex, whether you're a manager, a teacher, a professor or a real estate agent who can do modeling, there's going to be huge, huge demand for people who can explain. Great adapters -- people who are simply good at adapting to whatever new. Also has video and full transcript.

First Focus on Performance and Then Enable That - The Pursuing Performance Blog
I was at the forerunner of Motorola University, the Motorola Training & Education Center where I learned to better appreciate Education alongside Training. We had to Educate, not train, leaders about "future things" that were coming down the pike AT them.

PowerPoint: sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying - Presentation Zen
PowerPoint is a great tool for displaying visuals that enhance, illustrate, and generally magnify your narrative. It's been used effectively for years by millions of professionals from such disciplines as academia, engineering, medicine, business, education, government (mostly ineffectively in this case), design, technology, and comedy.

More Women Online - eMarketer
There will be an estimated 97.2 million female Internet users ages 3 and older in 2007, or 51.7% of the total online population. In 2011, 109.7 million US females will go online, amounting to 51.9% of the total online population.

Learning, Testing, Context, Transparency - 4/13/2007

Learning math on the streets - On the Brain
Learning is always to a significant extent context-based. We all know that "being good at school" does not automatically translate to high adaptive intelligence for any other real environment!

Tests + Stress = Problems For Students - Brain Connection
The byproduct of years of testing has caused students to believe that good grades are more important than understanding - that high scores rather than the cultivation of the mind is the purpose of schooling. Also, see This is Your Brain on Poverty and Nowadays, Even the Illiterates Read and Write.

Maximizing Your Return on People - Harvard Business Review (Laurie Bassi)
An evidence-based approach to HR is a methodology for determining which HR policies and programs will have the greatest impact on subsequent business results by using quantitative methods to identify the casual relationships between the management of people and business results.

The Future Of Learning Is Informal And Mobile - Robin Good
When you do something you have to stop and reflect, you have to learn something: wikis are about putting those reflections together in the collective action. That's important for building new knowledge, new ideas and understand what to do next. You are not saying things in a classroom out of context, you are not sitting in a formal course within an organization but you are actually there, where you need to be. You need to apply the context to the context itself. I think that's what mobile learning does: it enables us to utilize the context in a better way.

Operation Channel 9 - Wired
Channel 9 makes Microsoft look downright visionary through the use of transparency. No large company - with the possible exception of Sun Microsystems - is as far along in understanding how the Internet changes the way employees connect with suppliers, customers, shareholders, and peers.

Learning, Presentations, & Context - 4/12/2007

The Importance of Learning Slowly - Gary Woodill
Like neural networks, the brain is based on vector algebra, rather than numerical computations. Vectors have strength and direction, and many vectors, representing multiple inputs, unite to form a result. The result in the brain is strengthening or weakening of a set of neural connections, a relatively slow process.

Designing the Perfect Presentation - Business Week
In the accompanying slide show, seven keys I learned from Duarte that can be applied to any presentation.

Pearls Before Breakfast - Washington Post
Most of you have more than likey read this, if not, it is well worth the read: A test is performed of whether, in an incongruous context, ordinary people would recognize genius. The experiment consists of having a world famous violinist perform incognito in the Washington D.C.'s Metro during rush hour. Will people stop, listen, and observe because they recognize something great is happening, or will they ignore him because he is totally out of context with the surrounding environment? Note - be sure to view the comments too.

Context developers get it right - Tom Haskins
Afer reading the above link on context, you might want to see how it applies to learning design.

Diversity Training: Where It's Been, Where It's Going - CLO
Traditional diversity training has focused on sexual harassment, racial disparity or some other concept specific to a particular demographic, but Hannum said, in the future, diversity training will move toward more general concepts as the workforce becomes more demographically heterogeneous and faces more religious, racial, cultural, regional, even professional differences.

Effectiveness of Reading and Mathematics Software Products: Findings from the First Student Cohort - IES
Test scores were not significantly higher in classrooms using the reading and mathematics software products than those in control classrooms.

Collecting Knowledge and Learning - 4/09/2007

A Methodology for Complex Problems
The great challenge we have in any open, self-managed process is that the more informed you are about a subject, the more likely you are to have already formed conclusions about approaches and even answers to the problems it presents. This is human nature -- we form opinions quickly and change them slowly and reluctantly, as Lakoff's theory of frames and worldviews has demonstrated.

Research points the finger at PowerPoint - Sydney Morning Herald University of NSW research shows the human brain processes and retains more information if it is digested in either its verbal or written form, but not both at the same time.

The internet at work - distraction or destruction? - New Scientist
A new analysis suggests that much of what might be called "wasting time on the internet" is not such a bad thing. And that it should even be accepted as a normal part of working.

Jim Walton Has Us All Going on Raising Adult IQ! - Brain Based Business
You can increase your IQ score daily at work - regardless of your age or developmental level at the time. That's because IQ. . . or mental capability. . . is not fixed as we once thought it was.

Collecting Knowledge and Learning - 4/04/2007

Management Tools 2007: An Executive's Guide - Bain & Company
Executives must be more knowledgeable than ever as they sort through the options and select the right management tools for their companies. The selection process itself can be as complicated as the business issues they need to solve. They must choose the tools that will best help them make business decisions that lead to enhanced processes, products and services - and result in superior performance and profits. PDF file. Via mopsos.

More and less: Designing for high-stakes decisions - Putting people first
There are two types of decision-makers - maximizers and satisficers - and how one of the two types are generally happier. He also illustrates how human beings are not wired to make rational decisions. Full article.

New Tricks and Old Dogs - CNBC
Roger Schank's discusses innovation and "We Don't Know What We Need," thus we need to observe them, rather than just ask them. Look at the word and ask yourself, "What is odd here? What needs fixing." (video)

Bite the Bullet: Improving Your Presentation Strategies - CIO
Implementing a few sound strategies can make your presentation process more predictable and painless, keep the audience's attention and help ensure approval for project goals.

Knowledge Management (KM) and Social Computing - are they the same? - Dissident
KM has spawned an entire industry - from academic dissertations on human cognition (how the brain thinks), to software vendors offering hierarchical and work flow-driven architectures as a panacea for everyone's knowledge and information needs. If things weren't complicated enough, we now have a relatively new term to confuse all but the army of consultants who thrive on giving complicated labels to simple behaviours - 'Social Computing'.

The Luxury Touch - strategy+business
Superb service is the indispensable ingredient of successful high-end brands. Follow four principles to deliver customer satisfaction year after year.