Reading, Learning, Cloudworker, Design, & Leadership

More on "Why don't we read so well on a screen?" - Innovations Report

Reading on a screen gives us more brain stress than reading the same text on paper. Clicking and scrolling interrupt our attentional focus. Turning and touching the pages instead of clicking on the screen influence our ability for experience and attention.

Formal vs. Informal Learning in 3 Learning Contexts - The Pursuing Performance Blog

Guy Wallace writes:

• Personal Learning - for any personal interest or hobby - anything (in my definition - or is that iDefinition?) that does not lead to earning a living. From learning for the sake of learning for pure personal pleasure - to learning with very specific goals, such as learning to scuba dive.
• Educational Learning - for learning within an educational institution for expanding knowledge to applying knowledge - and "to learn to earn" in current applications of knowledge. Includes both Formal and Informal Learning.
• Enterprise Learning - for learning with a purpose and a return on the investment in mind - including general knowledge and skills, to very targeted performance capability development/ assurance.

Where Informal Learning makes sense - use it. But that is less-so in an Enterprise Context - except for the very advanced learners/Performers. Those 15%-ers. That's what research suggests is the % of people who can learn out of context and apply it to a different context. That means that 85% cannot learn out of context and then apply it.

Q: And what do you do? A: I'm a cloudworker - Janet Clarey

The way I see it, you've got two types of information workers at your organization. You've got 'cloudworkers' who will define what they need. . . The rest of your learners (and many managers) seek (and are use to) clarification (although there are probably a few that aren't even seeking that - just practicing on-the-job retirement or hating their jobs).

Anyone Can Be a Web Designer - CenterNetworks

Interesting quote from Allen Stern:

It's these type of "fly by night" designers (or developers, marketers, etc.) that will slowly erode the industry as a whole and make it harder for talented professionals to get work.

I think that there is also some fear amoung learning designers that these new tools will also erode their industry, but great learning designers will always be needed.

$20 Billion Company CEO... Takes the Bus - Evolving Excellence

With all the talk of corporate jets and massive bonuses for the CEO's of failing companies, here's a jolt of true leadership inspiration.

Christmas Eve News - 2008

How NORAD Tracks Santa - Wired

NORAD is training on a daily basis to handle whatever comes up this Christmas:

The North Warning System, a network of 47 radars strung across the continent's northernmost frontier, tells NORAD when St. Nick takes off from the North Pole. Infrared satellites track the jolly old elf's flight path once he's airborne. "The satellites actually pick up an infrared signature from Rudolph's nose," says Navy Lt. Desmond James. Once Santa touches down, a little-known network of surveillance cameras called "Santa Cam" transmit images of St. Nick making deliveries. The global network went online 10 years ago, and NORAD officials swear it is used only on Christmas Eve. Four C-18 fighter jets escort Santa through Canada before handing the job over to F-16s as the sleigh enters American airspace (the movie above capture parts of last year's Christmas deliveries).

Online v. print reading: which one makes us smarter? - Scientific American

Reading online may not be as rewarding - or effective - as the printed word. The reasons: The process involves so much physical manipulation of the computer that it interferes with our ability to focus on and appreciate what we're reading; online text moves up and down the screen and lacks physical dimension, robbing us of a feeling of completeness; and multimedia features, such as links to videos and animations, leave little room for imagination, limiting our ability to form our own mental pictures to illustrate what we're reading.

Learning technology sector shuns recession - New Brunswick Business Journal

While traditional soft-skills training gets slashed as soon as companies hit hard times, training related to productivity, safety and efficiency - as well as military training - continue to see a demand during slowdowns. Business can benefit from training," he said. "They can improve operations and increase their margins and produce returns on investment.

Next Up - Designing Learning

I wrote a post on Flipping Kirkpatrick into a backwards planning tool. After writing it I decided to do a series of posts on each of the four steps. Two have been written and posted. The third one, Designing Learning, should be finished before New Years Eve:

• Identifying Business Impacts
• Capture the Performance
• Designing the Learning - Next up
• The Learners' Perception

Capture the Performance

Once the impact or desired result has been defined, the next step in the backwards planning process is to define the performance level that will support the impact. That is, what exactly must the performers do to ensure that the results or outcome is achieved? Defining the desired performance by recording the steps gives the designers an outline on which to base the learning process.

Defining the performance is normally achieved through two means: explicitly and expository. Explicit performances are ones that can be readily observed because they are already in place. For example, a manager who wants to ensure that new hires are trained in a process that is already in place or a manager who has observed an expert performer master a process and now wants to ensure that the rest of her department models that performance.

Expository performances are new, thus there are no exemplary performers to observe in order to base the performance steps on. Rather, the analyst has to prompt an expert to interpret and describe something based upon her background experiences and knowledge of the subject or task. For example, when a new process is put into place or a process that has been radically changed to produce a more efficient and/or effective one. In addition, tasks that are normally associated with "knowledge workers" often have no clearly observable actions and can often be accomplished in multiple ways, thus a definable performance must be built.

It should be noted that some performances will not be exclusive to one or the other, but rather a combination of the two, however they will normally fit more readily in one of the two performances.

Defining the performance is normally achieved through one or a combination of two means: observing and interviewing Exemplary Performers (EP) and/or Subject Matter Experts (SME).

We can thank John Howe and Dave Ferguson for the term, "Exemplary Performer" (exemplar) - a practitioner who currently does the job, produces exemplary results, and who's widely seen as outstanding in those two dimensions.

Now I'm going to differ with Dave and John on the term of Subject Matter Expert, mostly because I held the title of SME for over a year while serving in the Armed forces who basically define a SME as an expert in the job who works with an instructional designer in the development of a learning/performance process. And for the purpose of this discussion I'm going to add: the expert may not currently perform the job, but her experience and knowledge about the job has given her insights into the performance, especially expository performances.

Explicit Performance

This type of performance is normally easier to define and break down into tasks because you have a model of excellence to observe and interview. Observations are normally accomplished through:

• Observation Task Analysis: Observe the tasks required in the performance under actual working conditions and record each step for performing a task and the standards of performance.
• Simulated Task Analysis: Observe the tasks required in the performance using simulated working conditions. The working conditions should match the job environment as closely as possible. Record each step and standards of performance in addition to receiving input from the performer when the simulation does not match actual working conditions.

In addition to the observations, an "Interview Analysis" is also performed: consulting with the exemplar to determine the required steps and standards of performance. This is normally used to validate the data gathered by the observations. Note that this method should not be used alone as performers often leave out vital steps as they have performed the task so often that some of the steps become internalized, thus they fail to acknowledge in even doing so.

In addition, observations normally only include the what and how, thus the interview is used to gather the whys. For example, Icihro always goes through the same basic routine when he approaches the plate to hit.

Part of the routine is a tug on the shoulder of his uniform. While some of his hitting techniques can easily be understood by observation, this part is not readily explainable:

• Is a habit?
• Is it a lucky superstition?
• Is it part of a routine to put him into a zen-like hitting state?
• Does it loosen his sleave so as not to restrict arm movement?

Questions are asked to determine if this part of the exemplar's performance is required. If it is, such a loosening his sleeve for full arm movement, then the "why" is important so that it can be explained to the learners. Perhaps it might be to put him in a zen-like hitting state and if so, do new performers need to do it or can they learn it on their own or should it be put into an advance learning process once they have learned the basics?

Expository Performances

Unlike explicit performances, expository performances have no exemplars to observe and interview, thus the performance steps are normally obtained through:

• Content Analysis: Analyzing operating or technical manuals (to include web resources) in order to determine the steps and standards of performance.
• Interview Analysis: Consulting with a SME to determine the required steps and standards of performance.

While explicit performances normally rely mostly on exemplars to model the performance, expository performances rely more on a network of content, SMEs and EPs to first build the model and then to test the model. In addition, you have to work more closely with your customers to ensure the model will work for them (buy-off).

As you work your way through this network, you will often discover that there are a number of ways to accomplish a task within the performance. A simple example is a software program in which you can use hot-keys, a context menu (click the right key on the mouse), or the main menu at the top of the screen. Thus you have to decide if all three methods are actually needed or if you can reduce the number for more effective and efficient learning. For example, you might decide to concentrate on the context menu whenever possible. However, since the performers will use the copy and paste command quite frequently, then the hot keys for these two commands will also be taught.

Capturing the performance provides the designer with a blueprint for the next step in backwards planning -- planning the learning process.

Patterning, Layoffs, Corporate Culture, & Science

Meaning is made through patterning - Live Journal

Jeff Knight's video on instructional design.

More Companies Are Cutting Labor Costs Without Layoffs - New York Times

Companies are using technology to track employee performance and productivity, and in many cases they know that the workers they would cut are productive ones. People are measured and 'metricked' to a much greater degree, so companies know that when they're cutting an already taut organization, they're leaving big gaps in the work force.

For more reasons on why not to layoff, see Downsizing.

10 Reasons to Design a Better Corporate Culture - Harvard Business School

Strong, adaptive cultures can foster innovation, productivity, and a sense of ownership among employees and customers. They also outlast any individual charismatic leader.

Gingko Study Proves Nothing - Brain Blogger

A quite interesting statement from Donna Schwontkowsk:

There's a huge fallacy that exists in the minds of most people regarding research studies. That fallacy is that you can prove that something is NOT effective. This is a scientific oxymoron. Science is the systematic observation, measurement and classification of observable phenomenon. The absence of a relationship cannot be observed, classified or measured. Thus, scientific studies can only prove what exists, not what does not exist.

For example, this brings to mind learning styles in which studies generally show they are not effective when it comes to training, but we know that peole learn differently and have preferences.

Competency Models, Mindhacks, Training, Experiential Learning, Twitter, SharePoint, and Order

Using Competency Models to Target Training Needs: Lessons Learned - ASTD

Josh Bersin explains:

Our research proves that organizations that use a leadership competency model are three to four times more effective, and sometimes as much as six times more effective, than companies that don't use models. Yet we have found that fewer than 20 percent of companies use this more effective, integrated approach.

100 Terrific Mindhacks to Make the Most of Your Brain - Find Schools

Your mind is a powerful thing, but it's often limited by things like fear, habit, and poor health. However, there are a number of ways to improve the way you use your mind.

Training in the 21st Century: Everything Old Is New Again - Chief Learning Officer

Ed Cohen writes on "Where the Rubber Meets the Road:"

In many ways, the ability to link learning interventions to a company's strategic objectives represents the epitome of training's aspirations. If a CLO can point to the metrics that show training's impacts on those objectives, so much the better - for both his budget and people.

Experiential Learning at a Distance - Training Magazine

Jacob Stoller notes:

Distance learning often is seen as a compromise in which the intimacy of the in-person classroom is sacrificed for the low cost and convenience of online methods. The medium, however, can provide some unique advantages. One of them is privacy, which allows learners to venture outside of their comfort zone without fear of making a bad impression.

Definition of Twitter - maverickwoman

"Twitter is breathing the news as it happens and raising the wisdom of the crowds 140 characters at a time." Found on twitter (Twitterrific to be more specific).

The truth about SharePoint - KM World

SharePoint promises a number of services (even more than its so-call "six pillars"), but it doesn't necessarily deliver on all those promises to the extent customers hope or expect.

Christopher Alexander's The Nature of Order - Later On

One important idea is to go to the site and look at it and its surroundings, and situate the structure to take advantage of the site. (via Signal vs. Noise)

As a Learning Designer, do you go to the site to ensure your learning platforms fits in with the environment?

Backward Planning - Identifying Business Impacts

If we learn how to do something, we have the capability to perform in a new way. For value to occur, we have to change our behavior and use the new capability in performance. Further, our performance must be aimed at worthwhile results — Brinkerhoff and Apking (2001).

The first step in performing Backward Planning for Learning Initiatives is to determine the desired impact that will improve the performance of the business.

Business impacts (often called results or outcome) begin with the end in mind and are best achieved through "Business Linkage" — spelling out how a learning initiative supports the organization's initiatives, strategies, or goals (Garnevale, Gainer, & Villet, 1990). Business linkage is considered a "high value add", which is basically defined as the difference-making in business in that it adds high value. Yet linking learning initiatives to other business units is normally one of the activities that learning designers spend the least amount of time on (Trolley, 2006). We spend an enormous amount of time on designing and implementing our learning programs, but often fail to explain to our customers exactly how it impacts the organization.

For example, the chart below shows the average percent of time for creating a learning program (USMC Multimedia Guideline for Percentage of Development). As shown, most learning initiatives spend a lot of time on design and development, but very little time showing the customer how the learning platform adds value.

Even though the design and development of a learning initiative may takes a considerable amount of time, there must be additional effort expended to show your customers exactly how the learning initiative will benefit them (planning) and how it did help them (evaluating). Since each customer is different, you have to collaborate with them to ensure you know what their expectations are and how they would measure success. If customers do not see the learning initiatives benefiting them, then they are going to start picturing the Learning Department as a consumer of resources rather than a resource that produces assets.

Learning initiatives should always be undertaken to improve the performance of the business, thus they should always be defined in business terms. This does NOT mean you have to show an ROI (Return On Investment); however, there should be a clear causal link at the very least.

For example, frequent feedback to subordinates is normally considered a means for promoting better performance that should equate to higher profits (Wick, Pollock, Jefferson, Flanagan, 2006). A goal of having supervisors learning feedback skills is NOT a business outcome as it does not relate to a verifiable outcome that adds high value. A better business outcome would be the supervisors's subordinates will receive more frequent and better feedback as a result of the learning initiative. This gives a result than can be both measured and verified.

Learning departments have become pretty adept at selling their initiatives on features rather than benefits. For example, they will promote an elearning program as allowing the learners to read, listen, or do both. Yet in the majority of cases this is a feature rather than a real benefit; indeed, in some cases it is poor instructional design. Benefits, on the other hand, solve customers' needs by adding high value in one of two ways: increasing profits or lowering costs.

Anything that does doesn't support the business will be subject to intense scrutiny. What can't be articulated as driving business will be scrapped. - Rebecca Ray (2008)

Thus our first requirement as instructional designers is to ensure the learning initiative provides a real benefit to our customers. Only after this primary requirement has been met to we consider adding worthy features. In the book, The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning (2006), the authors list four questions that need to be asked before the design of a learning platform begins:

• What business need will be met?
• What will participants do differently and better?
• Who will be able to see and confirm these changes?
• How will you measure and document results?

Only after these questions are answered does the next step in the "Backwards Planning" process begin: the level of performance the learners must be able to do to create the business impact.

References

Brinkerhoff, R. O., Apking, A. M. (2001) High Impact Learning. New York: Basic Books.

Garnevale, A., Gainer, L., & Villet, J., (1990), Training in America: The Organization and Strategic Role of Training. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Ray, R. (2008). The Future of learning. Chief Learning Officer. Dec., 2008, p.21.

Trolley, E. (2006). Lies About Learning. Larry Israelite, ed. Baltimore, Maryland: ASTD.

Wick, C., Pollock, R., Jefferson, A., Flanagan, R., (2006). The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning: How to Turn Training and Development Into Business Results. San Francisco: Pfeiffer.

Flipping Kirkpatrick

Donald Kirkpatrick's Four Levels of Evaluation was introduced in the late fifties:

1. Reaction - how the learners react to the learning process
2. Learning - the extent to which the learners gain knowledge and skills
3. Performance (behavior) - capability to perform the learned skills while on the job
4. Results (impact) - includes such items as monetary, efficiency, moral, etc.

Because of its age and with all the new technology advances, it is often criticized nowadays for being too old and simple. Yet, almost five decades after its introduction, there has not been a viable option to replace it. And I think the reason why is that because Kirkpatrick basically nailed it, but presented it wrong. Rather than being just an evaluation tool, it should have been presented as both a planning and evaluation tool. To do this, it needs one simple adjustment. . . flip it upside-down! That is, rearrange the steps into a "backwards planning" tool by starting with the end in mind:

Thus, planing and analysis needs to work backward by identifying:

1. the desired impact (outcome or result) that will improve the performance of the business
2. the level of performance the learners must be able to do to create the impact
3. the knowledge and skills they need to learn in order to perform
4. what they need to perceive in order to learn (the need to learn)

Planning it backwards will help to ensure there is a circular causality:

The learners' perception of the need to learn should motivate them to learn, which in turn causes the desired performance that drives the impact desired by our customer (client). This causality should continue in a circular fashion in that the results achieved should now drive the performers' perceptions of the need to learn more and perform better in order to achieve even better results. Of course this assumes that not only the customer understands the level of impact achieved, but also the performers/learners' perception on how close they came to achieving the desired result.

Eighth Mass Media, Creativity, No Trust, ID, & Fluidity

What's the opposite of email? - Faster Future

"Xerography - every man's brainpicker - heralds the times of instant publishing. Anybody can now become both author and publisher. Take any books on any subject and custom-make your own book by simply xeroxing a chapter from this one, a chapter from that one - instant steal!" - Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage (the father of rip, mix, & learn)

The seven mass media:

1. Print
2. Recordings
3. Cinema
4. Radio
5. Televsion
6. Internet
7. Mobile

We are now on the verge of the eighth mass medium -- us!

"We are the distrubution, the content, the medium, and the message carried with it." - David Cushman, EContent Magazine (Dec 2008)

What we need for the arrival of the eighth mass media is something which is as good at expressing our id and metadata outwardly just as broadly and effectively as your email account can collate it centrally.

Moodstream - Getty

Need some creative inspiration? Go to Moodstream and dial in the level of inspiration that best fits your present needs.

No Trust - eLearning Technology

Tony Karrer ponders the issue of "No Trust" of blogs as sources of information:

"it's a bit depressing to realize that you rank behind direct mail and online classifieds in terms of trust. That they think of what they find here the same way I think about other bloggers who I don't know. It's another data point that I will eventually validate through people I do know. A little depressing, but at least it's a data point."

History of Instructional Design - Random Ideas

Mousumi Ghosh looks at the emergence of Instructional Design as a discipline.

Learning Fluidity - Harold Jarche

Stories are an excellent example of learning flow. For millennia, we've learned through stories. Today, content capture and creation tools on the Web let us tell our own stories. Weaving our stories with those of others enables serendipitous learning and becomes a powerful way to reinforce our learning.

Essentials, Layoffs, Connectivism, & Corporate Blogs

The Frog

Why you should mix records on crap speakers - Signal vs. Noise

It's not the gear that matters. It's you and your ideas that matter. Tone is in your fingers. Gear can distract you from the essence of what you're working on. Strip what you're doing down to its bare essentials and evaluate that.

Thinking Twice About Supply-Chain Layoffs - Harvard Business School

Many retailers see labor more as a cost driver than a sales driver. However, the findings of a four-year study tell a different story. Research indicates that increasing the amount of labor at a store is associated with an increase in profit margin. These findings run contrary to the thinking of store managers in that service quality is a top indicator of store performance. For more information, also see Downsizing.

Connectivism and The Networked Student - Education Musings

What should 21st Century learning look like? How can social networking technologies be harnessed in learning spaces? How can emerging technologies truly, meaningfully impact the future of learning? How do we prepare our students and teachers for the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century? Includes video:

Consumers Distrust Corporate Blogs - AdWeek

A Forrester Research study found that only 16 percent of consumers trust what they read on blogs, a trust level below such hallmarks of veracity as direct mail and message board posts. Of all information sources, including traditional and interactive media, corporate blogs finished dead last in consumers' eyes.

Learning, KM vs. SM, Information, Web 2.0, and Second Life

Korean Soon Du Bu

Acquistion vs learning - Doing Something Different

"Two British researchers have just completed a study of undergraduate students that found "many young students are far from being the epitomic global, connected, socially-networked technologically-fluent digital native who has little patience for passive and linear forms of learning." Instead, the study found that students use a limited range of technologies for both formal and informal learning and that there is a "very low level of use and familiarity with collaborative knowledge creation tools such as wikis, virtual worlds, personal web publishing, and other emergent social technologies." See, More Mythbusting Evidence.

Knowledge Manaement vs. Social Media - Social Computing Magazine

Venkatesh Rao argues, "The Boomers will retire and the Millenials will win by default, in a bloodless end with no great drama. KM will quietly die, and SM will win the soul of Enterprise 2.0, with the Gen X leadership quietly slipping the best of the KM ideas into SM as they guide the bottom-up revolution." See, Social Media vs. Knowledge Management: A Generational War. Via Gary Woodill.

Jeff Kelly counters with, "Our technology and society will continue to evolve; people will continue to be resistant to (but finally adapt to) change; youth will continue to disdain their elders until they become tempered by wisdom; and the opportunities to learn and prosper will continue to grow for those wise enough to do so." See, KM vs. Social Media: Beware the Warmongers

Web 2.0 - More Effective for Formal Learning Than For Informal Learning - The Pursuing Performance Blog

Guy Wallace notes, "It almost feels as if Web 2.0 has been hijacked by the Informal Learning crowd. I'd like to commander it back to the middle. To share it with Informal Learning and Formal Learning. And as I'm pretty sure what Formal Learning is and is not - and unsure about what Informal Learning is and is not - that's the safe place to be."

The Impact of Information Technology (IT) on Businesses and their Leaders - Harvard Business School

Andrew McAfee lists 10 principles for the Enterprise 2.0 recovery plan:

• The company 'knows' the answers to our questions
• Most people want to be helpful to each other, and to the company
• Expertise is emergent
• People are busy
• Weak ties are strong
• The ability to convert potential ties into actual ones is valuable
• Platforms are better than channels
• Search is the dominant navigation paradigm
• The mechanisms of emergence should be encouraged
• Anyone can learn the new tools

Second Life's Second Wind -Forbes

In what tech pundits at Gartner Research call the curve of hype and gloom, Linden Lab's virtual world, Second Life, has officially entered the gloom stage. But Mark Kingdon, Linden Lab's new chief executive argues that Second Life has some life in it yet. In fact, Linden Lab's economic statistics from Second Life show that in-world user hours and the volume of virtual land rented by users are both growing.

Also see George Siemens' comments on University Affairs' story, Studies in Second Life.

Social Networking, Informal Learning, Twitter, & Gaming

Improved collective performance: Investing in Web 2.0 - Knowledge Board

We are all very familiar with social networking platforms such as MySpace, Flikr, YouTube, Twitter, Bebo and Facebook. They are almost household names. This is not so of a new generation of social networking technology, which is being used to provide software services under trading names such as Ning, CollectiveX, Sossoon, Hiitch, Huddle, Mzinga, British Telecom's Workspace (project management), Clearspace, and even Microsoft's Sharepoint.

How does management respond to this? Traditional senior and middle managers, who have been taught to assure operational predictability by securing tight control over workforce behaviour and events, must be prepared to manage in a different and more subtle way. The reward for a controlled implementation, approached with a high degree of professionalism, is a system which will likely reap benefits for all involved.

Informal learning - the next big thing? - Training Zone

We are on the threshold of a paradigm shift in learning. We have new learning environments and tools that enable us to access knowledge more effectively and to share and collaborate in better ways.

Why I Love Twitter - O'Reilly Radar

• Twitter is simple
• Twitter works like people do
• Twitter cooperates well with others
• Twitter transcends the web
• Twitter is user-extensible
• Twitter evolves quickly

Not playing around: Army to invest $50M in combat training games - Stars & Stripes

The Army has created a video game unit and will invest $50 million over five years on games and gaming systems designed to prepare soldiers for combat.

KM Asia: keynote on social computing - Dave Snowden of Cognitive Edge

Includes podcast and slides (pdf). "What's new about the new economy is that work is conversation" - Alan Webber, Founder of Fast Company. "It always has been, we just forgot about it for a while" - Dave Snowden.

Immersive Learning Simulations - DevLearn ILS slides

DevLearn ILS slides

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: devlearn elearning)

eLearning, Layoffs, Training, Internet, & Interactive lectures

Economic Crisis Boosts E-Learning - Science Daily

The present world's economic woes are opening up new opportunities for innovative forms of education and training such as informal learning, e-learning and blended learning. Faced with shrinking budgets, the use of learning technologies is becoming increasingly attractive for businesses.

What Toyota knows that GM doesn't - edgehopper

Toyota has a special culture, deep-rooted values, and respect for their workforce. Toyota's tradition is to NOT lay off employees during hard times. This tradition hasn't really been put to the test until now. And Toyota has stuck to its guns and its values.

Call center 'soft skill' training pays off for Motorola - Search CRM

Since the training, the division has seen a 10% rise in customer satisfaction and a 56% improvement in resolution rates, according to surveys conducted before and after the training.

Generation Y biggest user of U.S. libraries - Computerworld

Internet users were more than twice as likely to patronize libraries as non-Internet users, according to the survey. Sixty-two percent of Gen Y respondents said they visited a public library in the past year.

Pew report examines early online adopters - Digital Perspective

Internet adopters see themselves more as co-creators instead of simply users. I tried to think of another technology revolution that could say the same, users as co-creators, and couldn't come up with one.

Internet helps bring workers up to speed - Daily News

According to the 2007 Pew Internet & American Life Project, 22% of adults who viewed video online watched educational or training programs - more than sports, politics or music.

Interactive Lectures... - BUDAKBAIK

From best summary to essence.

Interactive Lectures (part 2).... - BUDAKBAIK

From fictional case study to job aid.

Training, Context, Disruptive Realism, Wunderkammern, & Numbers

The Well

The value of training - IBM

A company will lose 10 to 30% of its capabilities per year. By year three, an organization has retained only 41% of it original capabilities, dwindling to 24% by year six.

Context as Memory - Green Chameleon

Externalising our memories is also something a function that taxonomies fulfil, and is my official reason why I never allow anyone else to tidy my desk. It may look a mess, but whenever I have to sift through things to find that bloody document I know is in there somewhere I'm also being re-cued on all those interesting things I set aside to look at later. Brain science tells us that we forget things so as to be able to focus our continuing or repeated attention on things that are important to us. It's a filtering and discarding mechanism. We remember things if we are reminded of them. Also see, Ask a gardner what she knows, in a garden.

Disruptive Realism - cnet

Associate Creative Director Dave Hoffer has coined a new term: Disruptive Realism -- an expression presented in an everyday context that disrupts peoples perceptions about different things. Expression can mean many things and it a way it's art but it's also much more expansive a term than just art.

Blogs as Wunderkammern - Cabinet of Wonders

The blogging format invites blog collections to intermingle transparently: people can "add" to their catalog of items through blogrolls, blog memes, and, especially, polite appropriation: as blogs work with one another, greater Wunderkammern are created.

You are 80% less likely to die from a meteor landing on your head if you wear a bicycle helmet all day - Bad Science

We all love big numbers, and we're all fooled by big numbers, because we're all idiots. That's why it's important to think clearly, and ignore all newspapers.

Story Telling, Minimalism Instruction, Blogosphere, & Internet vs Books

Dion shows how to give good interview - Signal vs. Noise

On stories and narratives. . .

A lot of musician interviews wind up with a pulling-teeth vibe where you can sense the artist would rather just let the music do the talking. "Dion Pays Homage To Guitar-Rock Giants," an audio interview with the singer-songwriter on NPR, is the opposite of that. You can sense he can't wait to tell stories about his music and his peers.

It's a great lesson for anyone who's trying to promote something. If you just show up to plug something, it's easy to tune out. But if you give your audience a story they want to hear and/or teach them something interesting, they'll eagerly pay attention.

del.icio.us Tidbits: Minimalism - Williams Instructional Design, LLC

The minimalist design model holds that people learn more efficiently and use products more successfully by working more with the product and less with the documentation. Developed by Dr. John Carroll around 1982, the minimalist model is the subject of many papers in the human factors and documentation fields.

Who killed the blogosphere? - Nicholas Carr

While there continue to be many blogs, including a lot of very good ones, it seems to me that one would be hard pressed to make the case that there's still a "blogosphere." That vast, free-wheeling, and surprisingly intimate forum where individual writers shared their observations, thoughts, and arguments outside the bounds of the traditional media is gone. Almost all of the popular blogs today are commercial ventures with teams of writers, aggressive ad-sales operations, bloated sites, and strategies of self-linking. Some are good, some are boring, but to argue that they're part of a "blogosphere" that is distinguishable from the "mainstream media" seems more and more like an act of nostalgia, if not self-delusion.

The Internet vs. books: Peaceful coexistence - Los Angeles Times

"The Internet is a volume in our library," Ackerman says, "a colorful, miscellaneous, and serendipitous one -- but not a replacement for books, and certainly not an alternative to spending time in the world and just paying attention to things." Moulitsas believes it's the future, and the old guard needs to get with the times.

eLearning, Training, mLearning, AARs, & Generation Y

eLearning Learning Launched - eLearning Technology

eLearning Learning is a jump off point. The content comes from other places. Right now these are mostly posts from bloggers, but you will soon see other kinds of content appearing. The bottom line is that eLearning Learning is trying to help find and navigate the world of eLearning.

Training your way out of the recession - Times On Line

Britain's employers are being urged to "grow their own" after researchers at Cranfield School of Management discovered that investing in training not only saves money but is more effective than shopping around for talent.

With training budgets often the first to go in a recession, this research demonstrates that growing your own is an effective way for organisations to obtain the skills that they need while saving money.

How Widespread is Mobile Learning? - Kapp Notes

Two external reports point to only a few organizations actually implementing m-learning.

One is by the Masie Group and that study revealed that only 3%, or six of the 204 organizations surveyed were deploying mobile learning widely throughout the organization (although 21% did indicate that they have implemented it in some areas of their organization).

Another study by the eLearning Guild of survey of 940 of its members indicated that only 9% or 84 organizations had actually implemented m-learning.

Designing mobile eLearning courses - eLearning Slam

Before embarking on creation of a mobile accessible course you will want to understand how the learner's experience changes when they view your course through a mobile device. Mobile devices are typically used in a very distraction-filled environment. Via: Gary Woodill of Workplace Learning Today.

Blog>> There's Something About Failures - Green Chameleon

What really struck me was how frank those people were, in talking about what they would improve. It was tentamount to confessing that they hadn't quite done such a good job. This is remarkable because as career soldiers surely their performance bonus hinges on, well, their performance. Why were they so willing to broadcast their own failings, I wondered. As far as i could tell, it had to do with the person leading the AAR. As the head honcho, the commander set the tone for the session. Because this was a staging exercise for a larger one to be held the following year, he was emphatic about how important it was to surface mistakes so that we wouldn't repeat them the following year.

Managing The Generations - Forbes

There is a difference between Gen X and Y in terms of collaboration and independence. When I asked Gen Xers how often they wanted to interact with their boss, many said twice a week. I'm a boomer, I would've said twice a year! Ys would say twice an hour.

Geary Rummler, Workflow, Harley-Davidson, & Education

Geary Rummler speaking at Vision 2006 conference by Sandy Kemsley

A Day of Great Sadness - Dr. Geary A. Rummler Has Passed Away - The Pursuing Performance Blog

"Geary A. Rummler - how many performance improvement professionals of many stripes did you influence - both directly and indirectly!?! Tens of thousands minimally I would venture. Probably hundreds of thousands. And his influence won't stop now. It will continue." Guy Wallace also posted an update.

Whither Training? Less in the Classroom, More in the Workflow - Allison Rossett

When work and learning happen at different times and in different places, as is the case with classroom based instruction, there is cause to worry about transfer. Will the skills, knowledge, and attitudes picked up in class in March help with responding to customer inquiries in May? This is where blended learning contributes. Via Guy Wallace of The Pursuing Performance Blog.

Learning from Harley-Davidson's comeback - Signal vs. Noise

From 1973-1983, Harley-Davidson's market share went from 78% to 23% as Japanese manufacturers flooded the market with high quality, low priced bikes. Unable to compete on price against the Japanese producers, Harley had to establish other market values and improve quality. A Case Study of Harley Davidson's Business Practises looks at the management, marketing, and manufacturing techniques that brought the company back.

1985 Corporate Results from Hoover's Company Profile Database:
• Net Sales $288 million
• Net Income $3 million
• Earnings per Share $0.09

1995 Corporate Results from 1995 Annual Report
• Net Sales $1.35 billion
• Net Income $112 million
• Earnings per Share $1.50

Top 50 Education Companies - Inc.

The fastest growing education companies (includes corporate training) in America.

Web 2.0, Models, ISD, Trends, Hiring, LinkedIn, & Media

Web 2.0 Learning - eLearning Technology

Software is being used to allow JetBlue faculty to share around broader topics that just improvements in learning & development such as sharing photos from family vacations, weddings and birthdays. This allows faculty to get to know each other socially in order to be more effective sharing and working together later. They also use the technique of posting provocative topics in order to engage people in discussions.

Dangerous Models - The Frontal Cortex

People love models, especially when they're big, complex and quantitative. Models make us feel safe. They take the uncertainty of the future and break it down into neat, bite-sized equations. But here's the problem with models, which is really a problem with the human mind. We become so focused on the predictions of the model -- be it the cod population, or the risk of mortgage derivatives -- that we stop questioning the basic assumptions of the model.

This directly ties in with a recent link I posted, False advertising statistics effective, in that our preference or judgement is often influcenced more by specifications or numbers, that what we actually perceive through our other senses.

Designing for the ISD Life-Cycle - as Measured by Return on Investment and Economic Value Add - The Pursuing Performance Blog

"Having it your way," for each ISD'er with their unique approach to ISD, keeps the barn door open and the horses running free. The engineering community addressed this decades ago and "closed the barn door" with CAD/CAM systems (computer aided design/computer aided manufacturing). Additionally, standard parts inventories, design rules, and other tools and templates helped them speed design and ensure greater quality of those designs.

20 Education Technology Trends to Watch - Educational Technology by IQity

• Online Learning Opportunities
• Access to School Related Software Applications and Projects from any Computer in the School Network
• Unlimited Internet Access
• Online Communication Tools: Global Social Networks

Can an Army General Whip NBA Refs into Shape? - Time

Interesting story on hiring "outside the Box:"

"Credibility in this position has nothing to do with my ability to be an expert referee. I believe that in my heart," says Johnson, "Throughout my Army career, I've been promoted and moved around a lot, and never had time to master one thing," says Johnson. "I've really focused on leading and managing on a strategic level. So I guess you can say I feel comfortable with a broad range of ignorance. But I'm a quick study."

LinkedIn Applications: Your Resume Just Got More Dynamic - New York Times

Up to this point, LinkedIn has remained focused but - apart from those invitations to connect - not especially social or dynamic. No matter what the economic conditions, people will always be looking for new jobs. If LinkedIn continues to add features and applications that facilitate that inevitable searching and hiring, they're sure to succeed. And this new application platform appears to be right in line with that focus.

Mourning Old Media's Decline - NY Times

At the recent American Magazine Conference, one of the speakers worried that if the great brands of journalism - the trusted news sources readers have relied on - were to vanish, then the Web itself would quickly become a "cesspool" of useless information. That kind of hand-wringing is a staple of industry gatherings.

But in this case, it wasn't an old journalism hack lamenting his industry. It was Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google.

Typing, Talent, eLearning, Google, & Multitasking

Typewriter stays relevant in technology-saturated world Boing Boing & LA Times

But the typewriter part of Flores' business never went away. In some ways, it's even made a small resurgence. The simplicity of the typewriter is alluring to writers who may be overwhelmed (or underwhelmed) by increasingly elaborate technology. A typewriter is also appealing in its transparency -- whack a key, and watch the typebar smack a letter onto a piece of paper. Try figuring that out with a laser printer. Many people also find typewriters charming ambassadors of a bygone era. One recent customer asked Flores to fix her mother's college typewriter so she could type letters home when she went off to college.

Why talent is overrated - Fortune

A number of researchers now argue that talent means nothing like what we think it means, if indeed it means anything at all. A few contend that the very existence of talent is not, as they carefully put it, supported by evidence. In studies of accomplished individuals, researchers have found few signs of precocious achievement before the individuals started intensive training.

By contrast, deliberate practice requires that one identify certain sharply defined elements of performance that need to be improved, and then work intently on them. Tiger Woods - intensely applying this principle, which is no secret among pro golfers - has been seen to drop golf balls into a sand trap and step on them, then practice shots from that near-impossible lie.

Benefits and Challenges of E-Learning in the Call Center - CIO Today

e-Learning is effective and efficient for learning systems, hardware, software, phone, Internet, anything technical, rules, regulations, protocol, principles, anything rote and repetitive-it can be referred to again and again, as a reference, a resource, and/or a refresher. They are self-directed. People can learn at their own pace.

What e-learning is least suited for is soft skills training, specifically anger diffusion, conflict resolution, communication and listening, rapport building, as examples. Anything that deals with the 'human.' Why? Because impactful training of soft skills is live, highly interactive, experiential, and in real time.

Is Stupid Making Us Google? - The New Atlantis

The "F-Shaped Pattern for Reading Web Content" is the technique of reading horizontally across the first few lines of text, then halfway across for a few more, and finally vertically the rest of the way down the page; e.g., go to Google, type keywords, download three relevant sites, cut and paste passages into a new document, add transitions of your own, print it up, and turn it in. This is information retrieval, not knowledge formation.

Multitasking Can Make You Lose ... Um ... Focus - N.Y. Times

When it comes to Multitasking, it depends what you're doing. For some people, listening to music while working actually makes them more creative because they are using different cognitive functions. But despite what many of us think, you cannot simultaneously e-mail and talk on the phone. I think we're all familiar with what Dr. Hallowell calls "e-mail voice," when someone you're talking to on the phone suddenly sounds, well, disengaged.

Instructional Design, Training, Statistics, Web, 2.0, & New CEOs

What Is Instructional Design?

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: instruction design)

Instructional Design in a Connected World - Brainstorm in Progress

Much of what has been said characterizes instructional design as mechanistic, linear, and formulaic. To an extent, there is some truth to this because instructional design has many problems to solve - one of them, for instance, might be that factory workers may need to know how to operate a specific piece of equipment or billing coders in hospitals may need to know some legal procedures.

Business leaders urge firms not to slash training - People Management

Now is precisely the time to keep investing in the skills and talents of our people. "It is the people we employ who get us through. When markets are shrinking and order books falling, it is their commitment, productivity and ability to add value that will keep us competitive. Investing now in building new skills will put us in the strongest position as the economy recovers."

Connecting the instructional design dots - Virtual Learning Worlds

From an instructional design standpoint, we talk a lot about "Just in time" learning, or JIT. The design field has struggled with this for many years. How do you get that critical information to your employees or students exactly when they need it the most?

False advertising statistics effective, say 9 out of 10 cats Mind Hacks

Even when consumers can directly experience the relevant products and the specifications carry little or no new information, their preference is still influenced by specifications, including specifications that are self-generated and by definition spurious and specifications that the respondents themselves deem uninformative.

The long nimbus - The Economist

Firms have at last begun to embrace Web 2.0 technologies in earnest, a trend predictably called Enterprise 2.0. By 2013 companies around the globe will spend $4.6 billion on such tools, according to Forrester Research.

Companies may not have much choice but to open up, says Mr Mulholland. Employees will increasingly resist constraints on their use of technology, and they will have a growing need to reach beyond the corporate firewall. Twenty years ago, he argues, 80% of the knowledge that workers required to do their jobs resided within their company. Now it is only 20% because the world is changing ever faster. "We need to be open to new and unknown connections with people and content," he says.

The Seven Things That Surprise New CEOs - Harvard Business School

The CEO must learn to manage organizational context rather than focus on daily operations. Providing leadership in this way - and not diving into the details - can be a jarring transition. One CEO said that he initially felt like the company's "most useless executive," despite the power inherent in the job.

Training, Creativity, Corporate Transparency, Telecommuting, &Internet

Where is Training Going?

1. Iterative & Collaborative - Catherine Lombardozzi

As we continue to morph and flex the ADDIE model, we need to think about iterative design and development and creating teams of people to complete projects (rather than creating teams of people responsible for one function). It isn't just about creatively implementing a design and development model to generate different kinds of solutions. It's about a different kind of working relationship between and among designers, developers, artists, programmers, media specialists and - yes! - even clients - to pool creative energies and decision making.

Also, see Catherine's Learning Environment Design

2. Personalization and Contextualization - Harold Jarche

Good trainers know how to personalize and contextualize their sessions, but social media can reinforce this continuously, not constrained by time or space. Successful organisations will move from a training focus, and even beyond a performance improvement focus, to a connecting and facilitating one.

3. Informed Learning Support - Dave Ferguson

Most people don't want to stumble around in the basics. If they don't know anything, they'd like to get quickly to where they do know something, so they can try to do something. The factory learning model doesn't fit every situation, but neither does everyone want to build his own auto engine, let alone smelt the steel to make it with.

4. Blended - Clive Shepherd

Only the most motivated and independent learners can sustain prolonged periods of self-study, however good the materials; and only a minority of topics can be handled by self-study alone. All of which brings us back, of course, to blended learning, which is where I'd recommend any organisation to start their journey of transformation.

5. Txtng rcks (mLearning) - Donald Clark (Plan B)

Its strengths are that it's cheap, immediate, direct, personal, not in real time and unobtrusive. I think every company and organization that has staff using mobile phones should be forced to do a course on texting, then forced to text more often than talk on the phone. Texting cuts to the quick. It would save them all an absolute fortune.

6. Learnscapes - Jay Cross

Convergence of work and learning -- tell people what you expect them to do; then make it easy for them to learn how to do it. It's not rocket science, but it does turn the usual way of looking at corporate learning on its head.

How to Unleash Your Creativity - Scientific American

There are four different skill sets, or competencies:

• The first and most important competency is "capturing -- preserving new ideas as they occur to you and doing so without judging them.
• The second competency is called "challenging" -- giving ourselves tough problems to solve. In tough situations, multiple behaviors compete with one another, and their interconnections create new behaviors and ideas.
• The third area is "broadening." The more diverse your knowledge, the more interesting the interconnections -- so you can boost your creativity simply by learning interesting new things.
• And the last competency is "surrounding," which has to do with how you manage your physical and social environments.

Is Corporate Transparency Always a Good Thing? - Harvard Business Review

The modern example that has long been held as the standard is Johnson & Johnson's response to the Tylenol murders of 1982. By all accounts, the company handled the crisis brilliantly. By contrast, the corporate graveyards are marked with the headstones of many companies that were less forthcoming, or even deceptive, in their dealings with the public: WorldCom and Enron, to go back a few years, and Lehman Brothers and AIG to pick from recent headlines.

Let's look at a recent case: Daniel Bouton, CEO and Chairman of Societe Generale. Back in January, Daniel Bouton learned one weekend that a rogue trader in his shop had generated almost 50 billion euros in losing bets - a great deal more than the firm was worth.

Home Sweet Office: Telecommute Good for Business, Employees, and Planet - Wired

Time and again, studies have shown that telecommuters are every bit as engaged as their cubicle-bound brethren - and happier and more productive to boot. Last year, researchers from Penn State analyzed 46 studies of telecommuting conducted over two decades and covering almost 13,000 employees. Their sweeping inquiry concluded that working from home has "favorable effects on perceived autonomy, work-family conflict, job satisfaction, performance, turnover intent, and stress." The only demonstrable drawback is a slight fraying of the relationships between telecommuters and their colleagues back at headquarters - largely because of jealousy on the part of the latter group. That's the first problem you solve when you kill your office.

The Internet is no 21st-century boob tube - cnet

It turns out the Internet isn't exactly following the model of the boob tube in co-opting family discourse, according to a new national survey of 2,252 adults from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. "We were surprised to see that lots of families treat the Internet as a place for shared experiences," Tracy Kennedy, author of a new report about the survey called "Networked Families."

eLearning, mLearning, Tech Terms, Google, & iPods

US Corporate eLearning Market Reached $5.2 Billion in 2007 - Ambient Insight

The US corporate market for Self-paced eLearning reached $5.2 billion in 2007. Although overall growth is slowing due to the recession, the recession is also acting as a growth catalyst for certain types of products and services.

The research indicates that the current demand in the enterprise has a negative growth rate of -5.5%. In contrast, the demand in small companies doubled from 4.20% in the 2007-2012 forecast period to 8.51% in the 2008-2013 period. The demand in the large and medium-sized companies is relatively robust at 16.3% and 26.7% respectively.

mLearning Pilot (Learning on a Blackberry) - Learn-Learn-Learn

A critical key to our success is that we decided that we had to be successful with our very first project ... and that we needed to eat this elephant one bite at a time. There are so many ideas and possibilities - which folks have been more than happy to raise and ask - yet we're just starting out and don't want to set ourselves up for an "oops" moment. So, our first project has been developing a Performance Support Tool for a group who are always on the road and who are now being asked to be more consultative in their client contacts and interactions. In a nutshell we created this tool in HTML and controlled the layout through style sheets.

Tech Terms to Avoid - New York Times

David Pogue's list of pretentious pet-peeve words to avoid, "I used to consider plain-English writing a competitive advantage, so I've never leaked this list to potential rivals. But at this point, forget it; any tips that might contribute to clearer writing deserve to be free."

Googling and intelligence - Nicholas Carr

The average young person spends more than eight hours each day using technology (computers, PDAs, TV, videos), and much less time engaging in direct social contact. Our UCLA brain-scanning studies are showing that such repeated exposure to technology alters brain circuitry, and young developing brains (which usually have the greatest exposure) are the most vulnerable ... More than 300,000 years ago, our Neanderthal ancestors discovered handheld tools, which led to the co-evolution of language, goal-directed behavior, social networking, and accelerated development of the frontal lobe, which controls these functions. Today, video-game brain, Internet addiction, and other technology side effects appear to be suppressing frontal-lobe executive skills and our ability to communicate face-to-face. Instead, our brains are developing circuitry for online social networking and are adapting to a new multitasking technology culture. - Gary Small, M.D. Director, UCLA Memory & Aging Research Center

iPods for Learning

Semour Papert once said something to the effect that anything is easy if you can assimilate it to your collection of models. Thus for designers to see podcasts as a learning tool, then they must expand their set of models. Design guru John Thackara wrote that new technology normally works best when helping people to interact across time, rather than space. For example, it is helpful that I can listen to podcast from experts from any place. But what truly makes them invaluable is the ability to shift them to a time that suits me, thus I get an instant knowledge network principally on my own making.

Poverty, Brain, Far and Near Transfer, Web Design, & Web 2.0

Blog Action Day 2008 – Poverty

“The USA likes to be #1 in everything, and when it comes to the percent of children in poverty among the richest nations in the world, we continue to hold our remarkable status.” – David Berliner

America has one of the highest childhood poverty rates among industrial nations. Berliner, the Regent's Professor of Education at Arizona State University, dug into the data of high-stakes testing (No Child Left Behind) and poverty. He discovered that if you take the scores of the poverty stricken areas out of our national school averages, we rate among the best in the world (to include math and science). Leave them in and we plainly suck — we are near the bottom of the heap as compared to other industrialized nations. See: Our Impoverished View of Educational Reform – David C. Berliner

Elizabeth Gould discovered that when the brain is put under stressful conditions, it starves itself by failing to create new cells. There are severe social implications with this. Environments that are boring, have stressful noises, poverty, etc., have playing fields that are no longer level when compared to enriched environments. The brains that live in impoverished environments never have a chance as poverty and stress are no longer just concepts but are actual parts of a person's anatomy. See: The Reinvention of the Self – Jonah Lehrer in the Feb/Mar 2006 issue of Seed

“When a brain is worried, it's just thinking about survival. It isn't interested in investing in new cells for the future.” – Christian Mirescu

Our answer to poverty is high stake testing in education. We believe that if we educate children living in poverty, they will become productive members of society. Yet, this is backwards — we are trying to test a disfigured brain, hoping that it will somehow work. What we should be doing is eliminating poverty in order to relive stress, so that the brains will once again become interested in producing cells for the future. Yet all too often . . .

Woman hold her head and cry
Cause her son had been shot down in the street and died

Wanna tote guns and shoot dice.
all mah life i've been considered as the worst. lyin' to mah mother even stealin' out her purse crime after crime
from drugs to extortion
i know my mother wish she got a abortion

Woman hold her head and cry
Cause her son had been shot down in the street and died
– Hold Ya Head by the Notorious B.I.G. (featuring Bob Marley)

In the end, poverty becomes both nature and nurture, which helps to ensure that it stays a visious circle.

Internet use 'good for the brain' – BBC

The researchers said that, compared to simple reading, the internet's wealth of choices required people to make decisions about what to click on in order to get the relevant information.

However, they suggested that newcomers to the web had not quite grasped the strategies needed to successfully carry out a web search.

Professor Smith said: "A simple, everyday task like searching the web appears to enhance brain circuitry in older adults, demonstrating that our brains are sensitive and can continue to learn as we grow older."

Getting to far transfer – Dave's Whiteboard

If you want people to handle customer complaints or improve work flow or advise high school students, then the training requires increasing approximations of realistic situations. The design element involves identifying high-value or high-importance cases – even though the universe of cases is vast – so as to strengthen a person's ability to transfer what he's learned to a new situation.

Why light text on dark background is a bad idea – Enter the Tatrix

If you want to be really good, use an offset grey on a light background like #222 on #fff as it's a bit nicer on the eyes.

Is Web 2.0 Living on Thin Air? – Tom Davenport

British think-tanker Charles Leadbeater published the book Living on Thin Air. It was both an appealing notion and a scary one: that we no longer have to produce anything but ideas. And that was even before Web 2.0 — a platform for everyone to share their ideas, opinions, favorite tunes, and relationship statuses with each other.

Instead of finding more ways for us to all yap at each other, in this more sober economy we may want to emphasize other priorities. What new products and services will make for better, healthier lives and relationships? How can companies improve their performance? How can teenagers improve their math and science skills, instead of their texting skills?

Content, Training, Productivity 2.0, & What's New?

It's Not About The Content - Tony's Brain

When developing a course of instruction for delivery online, content is the last thing to be collected and assembled; the Learning Activities are always the first. Once the learning activities have been designed and "mapped" to a Learning Outcome, only then can the process of content collection begin. Use of the word "collection" is deliberate. One doesn't develop content, one collects it in such a manner that it ultimately provides the reference and instruction necessary to complete a Learning Activity.

IBM invests in business partners' training - C/NET

IBM, which expects to unveil better-than-expected quarterly figures, has announced it will spend some of its cash on incentives to encourage some of its largest partners to invest more in training and other areas.

Productivity 2.0: How the New Rules of Work Are Changing the Game - Zenhabits

For years, books and articles and blogs on productivity have been showing us how to be more productive: crank out the tasks, multi-task, work faster, be organized. In short, they've taught us to be a good part of a corporation that wants more out of us. But that's old-school productivity, or Productivity 1.0.

What's new?

280 Slides
There is a new online presentation creator in town -- 280 Slides (Beta). Create presentations, access them from anywhere, and share them with the world. With 280 Slides, there's no software to download and nothing to pay for -- and when you're done building your presentation you can share it any way you like.

Kaltura
Add interactive video capabilities to your blog!

SearchCube
Search results are presented in a 3-D cube that you can spin and tilt by using your Arrow-Keys. It is not really all that useful, however it does demonstrate that there are more than one way to preset information and data.

Oamos
This has been around for a while, but in case you missed it, Oamos presents search results in a compleatly different manner.

Design, Negotiation, Reflection, & Web 2.0

preparing to be wrong - Reflective Design

Why is this instructional design insight - big concept teaching and learning - important for interaction design? For one, every interaction, every interface, must be learned. A design will be easier to learn if it is consistent (shares critical properties) with other designs. For example, we can learn to operate a new Mac application if we know how to operate other Mac applications. Certain menus are positioned in the same way making it easier for us to learn the fundamental controls. The designed consistency creates a big concept design for the user-learners.

Are you a good negotiator? - Fortune

1. After a job interview, HR calls to offer you the job. The staffer names a salary 15% higher than you're making and says the benefits are generous.

She doesn't have time to negotiate the terms right now, but wants to know if you're going to accept. Since you really want the job, you should say yes now and hammer out the details tomorrow.

Critical Reflection

It is often difficult to encourage reflection among learners. Gustafson and Bennett (1999) found that promoting reflection among military cadets by means of written responses in "diaries" was difficult. Cadets across three different years generally did not produce responses indicating any deep reflection. Although the results were disappointing, they are consistent with the research literature on promoting reflection that generally indicates it is difficult to accomplish (Stamper, 1996).

In their work, Gustafson and Bennett identified eleven variables that affected the cadets' lack of reflective behavior.

The End of Web 2.0, Beginning of Web Infinity - Web Monkey

Business Week's Rob Hof, on the other hand, takes a more modest approach. He argues the ideas and momentum of Web 2.0 continues and pundits' words should be supplemented with a dose of skepticism. Just because a social network or video site may not make it through a recession doesn't mean the end to Ajax, APIs, widgets and the continuing design theories of big buttons, graphs, tabbed menus and large text.

An Ignoble But Much Needed End To Web 2.0, Marked By A Party In Cyprus - TechCrunch

Goodbye, Web 2.0. I hope I never have to type those words again. Now can we please get back to work? There's still a ton left to do before we get to Matrix-style virtual reality, the Singularity, and mobile phones with batteries that last a whole day.

Also, watch the video, it has Facebook Connect Dave Morin, his Google girlfriend Brittany Bohnet, Facebook product design lead/former Macster developer Aaron Sittig, Apple producer/designer Jessica Bigarel, WSJ tech reporter Jessica Vascellaro, Drop.io founder Sam Lessin, Blip.tv cofounder Mike Hudack and they are all lip-synching to Journey's Don't Stop Believin.

Memory, Web 2.0, Reading Level, Case Study, Audio, & Productivity

Speaking of Memory: Q&A with Neuroscientist Eric Kandel - Scientific American

Human memory reinvents itself all the time. Every time you remember something, you modify it a little bit, in part dependent on the context in which you recall it. That is because the brain's storage is not as exact as written text. It is always a mixture of many facades of the past event: images, pictures, feelings, words, facts and fiction -- a "re-collection" in the true sense.

The Web 2.0 Wave - HR Online

Technology is only an enabler -- that it allows functions to happen faster, easier and over longer distances. "The business issues of engagement, setting goals and alignment are still big gaping holes in most companies." "Because of technology, it's easier to solve these problems." For example, networking is generally considered to be a good thing.

How to get everyone to write like Ernest Hemingway - Making Change

Probably everyone on your team agrees that elearning should be concise and lively. But does everyone agree on what "concise and lively" looks like? Here's one way to get everyone on the same stylistic page.

Is the case study method of instruction due for an overhaul? - Jay Cross

Case studies can serve as a touchstone for discussions of real-world situations in organizations.

Information Architecture for Audio: Doing It Right - Boxes and Arrows

Content today is increasingly delivered by audio both online and in the real world. We have radio shows and newscasts, and in recent years, podcasts, audio books and navigation/car assistance systems have been added to the field. Audio is more emotional, as sound effects and acoustic atmosphere enhance content to help deliver its messages. It also affords users the opportunity to interact with content while their hands and eyes are busy (i.e. when doing physical work, driving, walking, etc). However, the inclusion of audio often results in usability issues that make it difficult for users to access and understand content. That is why we need new tools to organize linear content like audio.

The growing productivity divide - Seth Godin

Can you imagine someone who works in a factory that processes metal not knowing how to use a blowtorch? How can you imagine yourself as a highly-paid knowledge worker and not know how to do these things...

Let's Get Persian - Change This

Herodotus, the Greek historian, reported that the ancient Persians always made important decisions twice -- first when they were drunk, and then again when they were sober. Only if the Persians reached the same decision, drunk and sober, would they act on that decision. The approach apparently worked -- the Persians dominated the much of the Middle East and Central Asia for three centuries.