Twitter, Social Media, Design, & Color

My twitter mosaic

Twitter Followers Vis-A-Vis Mosaic Collage - Twitter Mosaic

A clever and useful way of viewing and clicking on your followers on Twitter. Via (e)Learning 2.0 & Beyond.

10 Ways Social Media will Change in 2009 - Read Write Web

"Social media" was the term du jour in 2008. Consumers, companies, and marketers were all talking about it. We have social media gurus, social media startups, social media books, and social media firms. It is now common practice among corporations to hire social media strategists, assign community managers, and launch social media campaigns, all designed to tap into the power of social media.

But social media today is a pure mess: it has become a collection of countless features, tools, and applications fighting for a piece of the pie.

50 Useful Design Tools For Beautiful Web Typography - Smashing Magazine

Typography is elegant when it is attractive and communicates the designer's ideas. When chosen wisely and used carefully, it can be very effective in supporting the overall design. Designers are always exploring different techniques with type: some use images or sIFR to produce very beautiful typography, while others prefer CSS alone to get the typography just right.

Color Scheme Designer - Petr Stanicek

Primary Color:

#2C17B1

#3A2E85

#160773

#5E4BD8

#7F71D8

2009 Color Predictions - Colour Lovers

Since Pantone recently selected their color of the year, Mimosa, and their spring fashion color predictions have been out for a while, i thought it was time to have a look at what their predictions looked like and check in with the current trends here at COLOURlovers.

Brightly Colored Uniforms Boost Employee Morale - The Onion

Though the new uniform policy has been in effect less than a week, it has already had a significant positive impact on job satisfaction. Experts attribute this rise in employee morale to the special feeling of belonging engendered by the uniform, which helps make workers feel like they're not just doing a job, but acting as part of a team.

Training, Myths on Learning, Obama Effect, & Discussion Network

Training Is Taking a Beating in Recession, Studies Find - Workforce

Average training expenditures per employee fell 11 percent in the past year, from $1,202 per learner in 2007 to $1,075 per learner in 2008, according to a report issued Friday, January 23, by research firm Bersin & Associates.

Bersin said its figures include training budgets and payroll. Bersin also said the U.S. corporate training market shrank from $58.5 billion in 2007 to $56.2 billion in 2008, the greatest decline in more than 10 years.

Myths the Business Side Has About Learning: Result of Data Gathering - Will at Work Learning

Will Thalheime gathers a list of Myths that the Business Side Has about Learning.

An 'Obama Effect' on Blacks' Test Scores? - Newsweek

In a paper under review at the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Friedman and colleagues present findings suggesting that Obama might close the black-white gap in scores on standardized tests. That gap reflects, in part, what psychologists call "stereotype threat". In this now well-established phenomenon, being reminded that you belong to a group that, according to prevailing stereotypes, isn't good at something causes you to do worse on a test of that something than if you were not so reminded.

Training World

Training World is a place to discuss human performance issues, such as training, development, education, learning (to include formal, informal, and nonformal), leadership, coaching, knowledge, networking or social media tools (such as Twitter, wikis, and blogs) and other related topics.

Messages are open to the public at the site, in addition there is a RSS feed: feed://rss.groups.yahoo.com/group/trainingworld/rss

TRDEV-L

TRDEV-L, the Training Development list created by Dr. David Passmore of Penn State in 1990, is renewed and is now up and running. It was shutdown after a ten-year run and immediately replaced by TRDEV, the Training and Development Discussion Group on Yahoo, in October 2000.

I joined TRDEV-L in the mid-nineties after hearing it was considered one of the premiere discussion groups, even by people outside the training and learning field. When TRDEV-L shutdown I immediately joined its baby sister - TRDEV. Now, after almost a nine-year run, TRDEV is shuting down. It saddened me to see it shut down, but my spirit is now raised by seeing that the old TRDEV-L is now replacing it.

While some people called the two lists as sometimes being combative, argumentive, and even quirky; the discussions always provided a wealth of knowledge about training, learning, and related subjects. As Dr. Passmore has always said, "the marketplace for good ideas eventually will win out."

To subscribe to TRDEV-L (the original Penn State list), send an email to:
LISTSERV@LISTS.PSU.EDU
and include the following, and only the following, in the body of the message:
SUBSCRIBE TRDEV-L

Once you have received a confirmation email, you can post to:
TRDEV-L@LISTS.PSU.EDU

Video, Meetings, Wikipedia, & Twitter

Video Training: Topics & Trends (PDF) - Wistia

Survey on using video in learning processes: Collective responses suggest that the value of video will be greater, and use of video will increase, when:

• Creating video becomes easier and less costly
• Sharing becomes secure and auditable
• Engagement can be measured in detail

Meetings Are a Matter of Precious Time - New York Times

But, please, don't just call a meeting and hope the magic happens. Take charge and take personal responsibility for meeting its objectives, whatever they are.

Watch out Wikipedia, here comes Britannica 2.0 - Fairfax Digital

In a move to take on Wikipedia, the Encyclopedia Britannica is inviting the hoi polloi to edit, enhance and contribute to its online version. Any changes or additions made to Britannica entries online would have to be vetted by one of the company's staff or freelance editors before the changes were reflected on the live site. The encyclopedia had set a benchmark of a 20-minute turnaround to update the site with user-submitted edits to existing articles, which are written by the encyclopedia's paid expert contributors.

All hail the information triumvirate! - Nicholas Carr

Wikipedia's dominance of Google searches:

• World War II: #1
• Israel: #1
• George Washington: #1
• Genome: #1
• Agriculture: #1
• Herman Melville: #1
• Internet: #1
• Magna Carta: #1
• Evolution: #1
• Epilepsy: #1

HOW TO: Use Twitter on the Go - Mashable

How to be a power Twitter user on any mobile device with a browser, and how to post your tweets safely and hands free while on the go.

Social Media "Experts" are the Cancer of Twitter (and Must Be Stopped) - Fanboy

Nearly a day goes by on Twitter without yet another social media "expert" choosing to stalk me. At first it started innocently - back in the day (about a year ago) various techie friends started to declare themselves social media gurus because they decided to hang out on Twitter and Facebook all day. And now an army of their offspring monitor Summize in search of human flesh.

A Learner's Framework

Bill Moggridge (2007) writes about a framework that is geared towards developing web interfaces by showing a person's needs and behavior for a particular project or task. This framework could also be used for learners. This framework is a two-by-two matrix with a vertical axis describing the view of the learner, with a long-term view at the top and a short-term view at the bottom. The horizontal axis shows how engaged the learner is, with low engagement on the left and high engagement on the right:

• In the top right hand corner are "Pathfinders" who are fully engaged and take a long term perspective.
• Below them, in the bottom right-hand corner, are "Organizers" who are highly engaged but take a short term view.
• Next door to them, in the bottom left-hand corner, are "Onlookers" who take a short term view and have low engagement.
• Above them, in the upper left-hand corner, are "Dreamers" who have a long term view, but have low engagement.

This would be a helpful tool for selecting a learning platform as most other methods look at the task, while this method looks at the needs and behavior of the learners and how they view a particular task.

A Pathfinder is someone who really needs to learn the task because she is going to be using it for the long-term and will be fully engaged during the entire time frame. Training or a blended platform will normally be called for and if the task is highly complex, an in-depth performance support package might also be needed.

Organizers are engaged by the task, but don't view themselves as being the primary task-holders. They might be a supervisor who needs to learn about the task, a person who will fill in part-time as a backup, or the task might simply be for the short-term. A just-in-time learning package, such as elearning might be used to give them the basic knowledge, followed by a highly detailed support package (job-Performance-Aid) that allows them to perform at the minimal requirements for a short period of time if needed.

Onlookers are not fully engaged in learning the task because they will not be performing the task; however, they are fully engaged in other closely related tasks, thus they need to see how that task relates to them. A basic elearning package that gives an overview of the task and how it relates to the organization might be a proper fit.

Daydreamers have a long term view because they see it as a means to something else, rather than an end; for example a means to do another task or job. However, they do not want to waste a lot of time learning the task, thus a quick and dirty elearning or blended course needs to fulfill any learning requirements, and if needed, the cheapest performance support band-aid available.

Google, YouTube, Fonts, & Influencing People

How Google Is Making Us Smarter - Discover Magazine

"Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin?" Most people might answer, "At the skull." But Clark and Chalmers set out to convince their readers that the mind is not simply the product of the neurons in our brains, locked away behind a wall of bone. Rather, they argued that the mind is something more: a system made up of the brain plus parts of its environment.

Eleven years later, this argument continues to trigger fierce debate among philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists. There is no doubt that the extended mind is a weird concept. One reason it seems so strange is that our minds feel as if they are really totally self-contained.

At First, Funny Videos. Now, a Reference Tool - New York Times

Faced with writing a school report on an Australian animal, Tyler Kennedy began where many students begin these days: by searching the Internet. But Tyler didn't use Google or Yahoo. He searched for information about the platypus on YouTube.

The explosion of all types of video content on YouTube and other sites is quickly transforming online video from a medium strictly for entertainment and news into one that is also a reference tool.

Free Fonts - Fonts Squirrel

Quality freeware that is licensed for commercial work. Works on both Windows and Mac OS X. See Help for installing.

A Tale of Three Cities

City One

Tim Walker writes in this post, "someone asked me if How to Win Friends and Influence People isn't too old-school for 21st century business. My reply: People haven't changed that much since HTWFAIP came out in 1936. The technology is much different, but people are much the same.

City Two

Some people want to say that the technology is SO different that it makes sense to distinguish between Twitter (or other social media) and real life. This is why the acronym IRL - "in real life" - is used online. But in fact Twitter is mostly just people talking to people. That makes it a part of real life.

City Three

However, Ira Glass, in This American Life, interviews Paul Feig, who as a sixth-grader and with the urging of his father, actually read the Dale Carnegie classic How to Win Friends and Influence People. What he found was that afterwards, he had a bleaker understanding of human nature - and even fewer friends than when he started. Listen to the podcast.

Why Google Employees Quit - TechCrunch

Those of us who failed to thrive at Google are faced with some pretty serious questions about ourselves. Just seeing that other people ran into the same issues is a huge relief. Google is supposed to be some kind of Nirvana, so if you can't be happy there how will you ever be happy? It's supposed to be the ultimate font of technical resources, so if you can't be productive there how will you ever be productive?

Training

Training is Dead, Long Live Training

Referring to the recent news of Flight 1549 making an emergency landing on New York's Hudson River, Guy Wallace posts in his blog:

The papers and TV news are full of the word "training" and "their training just kicked in" and some references to "there is a procedure for water landings" - so I hope I don't hear any more of this nonsense that "we train dogs, not people."

Shortly after reading Guy's posting, I was watching the Rachel Maddow show and she did a segment on Flight 1549 in which she discusses the importance training in infrastructures and systems in that the pilots, flight attendents, fire fighters, Coast Guard, police divers, ferries and other boats in the water were all well prepared for such emergencies because of the training they received. You can see her segment on MSNBC here (about 10 min).

Training is not only important in emergency situations but also for organizations who need to get the correct product or service out to their customers.

In addition to the importance of training, is the "lessons to be learned. Time Magazine writes:

The men who saved flight 1549, pilot Chesley B. Sullenberger III and co-pilot Jeffrey Skiles, will likely find their brains picked thoroughly over the ensuing weeks, says airplane safety expert Todd Curtis. "This will be a data-rich situation from which we can learn."

This is similar to the Army's After Action Review (AAR) in which an ARR focuses on the tasks and goals to discover why things happen. . . never to judge success or failure. An AAR is perhaps one of the ultimate performance improvement tools because it encourages all stakeholders to share and learn in order to have continuous improvement. As Peter Senge writes:

The Army's After Action Review is arguably one of the most successful organizational learning methods yet devised. Yet, most every corporate effort to graft this truly innovative practices into their culture has failed because, again and again, people reduce the living practice of AAR's to a sterile technique.

Training During a Recession - ASTD

The current climate is causing many training leaders to step back, if not cut back, and rethink how they deliver training. Travel reductions are an obvious first step, followed by increased online offerings. Panic has not set in inside training departments, and most organizations report pressure to do more with the same budget without being asked to reduce expenditures outright.

The Importance of Business Acumen Training for Managers and Employees - Motivation Connect

Once the organisation's strategic objectives and goals are established, HR and Training must ensure that educational offerings are aligned with them and contribute to their achievement. That means helping employees understand the goals and developing the knowledge and skills that will be required. At the most basic level of alignment, they should ensure that every employee understands:

• How the company makes money;
• How cash is generated and utilised to achieve goals;
• How their own day-to-day actions and decisions impact bottom-line success.

Learning at Zaxby's, Brain Switchboard, Twitter, Hiring, & Voice

Franchisees Benefit from Learning 2.0 at Zaxby's - Chain Leader

Over the last two years, Zaxby's has developed a franchisee training program integrating classroom, on-the-job and Web-based training that allows trainees to learn at their own pace and creates a more collaborative, flexible learning environment.

Switchboard In The Brain Helps Us Learn And Remember At The Same Time - Science Daily

The healthy brain is in a constant struggle between learning new experiences and remembering old experiences. Brain researchers now provide the first clear evidence supporting a competition between learning and remembering. Their findings also suggest that one brain region can resolve the conflict by improving the rapid switch between learning and remembering.

In support of a memory competition, the surprise test showed that learning the pictures is much more difficult when simultaneously remembering a word. At the same time, learning the pictures becomes easier when a word is forgotten.

The Social Value of Twitter - Nussbaum On Design

Twitter and other social media are developing into enormous tools of innovation - if you have the ability to listen, learn and adapt. These have always been core competencies for designers. Now they must become core competencies for everyone.

Starbucks' CIO tells how he picks new hires - Computer World

Most IT managers' first hires are programmers or tech support specialists. But not Stephen Gillett, the new CIO at Starbucks. The first person he ever hired as an IT leader was a chief financial officer who became his boss. Talk about trial by fire.

Why does my voice sound so different when it is recorded and played back? - Scientific American

When you speak, sound energy spreads in the air around you and reaches your cochlea through your external ear by air conduction. Sound also travels from your vocal cords and other structures directly to the cochlea, but the mechanical properties of your head enhance its deeper, lower-frequency vibrations. The voice you hear when you speak is the combination of sound carried along both paths.

Design, Thinking, Learning, Feedforward, & Predictions

The essence of strategy for design - Adaptive Path

When I think of strategy in the context of our design work, I think of three things:

• Philosophy: What are you about? What do you stand for, what is your approach?
• Vision: Where are you headed? How will you know you're successful?
• Planning: How will you get there?

Inside the Savant Mind: Tips for Thinking from an Extraordinary Thinker - Scientific American

Your learners are more likely to remember something if the place or situation in which they are trying to recall the information bears some resemblance - color or smell, for example - to where they originally learned it.

I know from my own experience that there is much more to "intelligence" than an IQ number. In fact, I hesitate to believe that any system could really reflect the complexity and uniqueness of one person's mind, or meaningfully describe the nature of his or her potential.

The bell curve distribution for IQ scores tells us that two thirds of the world's population have an IQ somewhere between 85 and 115. This means that some four and a half billion people around the globe share just 31 numerical values ("He's a 94," "You're a 110," "I'm a 103"), equivalent to 150 million people worldwide sharing the same IQ score. This sounds a lot to me like astrology, which lumps everyone into one of twelve signs of the zodiac.

As I have already mentioned, numbers to me have their own shapes, colors and textures. Various studies have long demonstrated that being able to visualize information makes it easier to remember.

You Can Look -- But Don't Touch - Science Daily

Can your learners actually "touch" want they need to learn? Perhaps one of the reasons that some learning programs end in failure is that the learners simply view it as a far-off distance object that provides no real ownership.

Previous research had documented that many people begin to feel ownership of an item long before they actually acquire it. But this is the first study to demonstrate that strong feelings of ownership can begin in as little as 30 seconds after initial contact if they are allowed to touch and handle it.

Try Feedforward instead of Feedback - Leaders Values

Participants are each asked to play two roles. In one role, they are asked provide feedforward - that is, to give someone else suggestions for the future and help as much as they can. In the second role, they are asked to accept feedforward - that is, to listen to the suggestions for the future and learn as much as they can.

My Prediction

With all the predictions taking place, I might as well get on the bandwagon. . . There has been some comforting news than in many organizations, the Training/Learning Departments have not been axed as hard as they were in the past. The chiefs of these organizations are beginning to realize the importance of training and learning to get them out of hard economic times. Thus, while it will still be some years before Training/Learning will be invited to have a seat at most corporate tables, we are beginning to be seen as important business-linkages that enable the business units to achieve their goals.

We will not jump as we have in the past with seeing every new shiny toy, such as programmed learning, video-tapes, and elearning as the next silver-bullet, but rather we will examine new technologies with critical, but open eyes so that we may best determine how they can be used to help our customers meet their goals.

Our learning platforms will be transparent to both learners and business units in that the former will know how to use it effectively to master a difficult task or subject, while the latter will see it as the most efficient means for achieving their business goals.

Our learning platforms will be more like matrixes that not only support formal, nonformal, and informal learning that help to pull the learners towards success, but also flexible in that they support a wide variety of business needs.

Management 3.0, Cognitive Load, Prototyping, Objects, Audio, & Broken

Management 3.0 - Here We Are. Now What?

Terrence Seamon writes that we are moving from Management 2.0 to Management 3.0:

• from focus on weaknesses to focus on strengths
• from appraisal to appreciation
• from "our way or the highway" to flexibility
• from "one size fits all" to customization
• from "command and control" to coach and engage

To fully move to Management 3.0 we are going to have to reverse the findings from Watson Wyatt's "WorkUSA 2006/2007" study that show only 49 percent of employees trust senior management, and only 36 percent believe top managers act with honesty and integrity. From Stgephen Covey's The Economics of Trust in CLO.

Reducing Extraneous Cognitive Load by Accounting for Individual Differences - Rob Barton

Tools like chunking, sequencing, imagery, and mnemonics can be utilized by an instructor to help a student process information and build on existing knowledge.

Prototyping with XHTML - Boxes and Arrows

Even if you do not use XHTML, this article provides some good pointers on prototyping, sketching, iteration, etc.

The true power of prototyping really emerges during iteration. This is when users can interact with your prototype. On a recent project, we sketched out a solution in which users could drag videos from a library onto a playlist. Looking at the static illustrations, it seemed a simple and elegant idea. But when users were able to interact with the solution, dragging and dropping video thumbnails, they found that it was a pretty tedious activity, especially for large numbers of videos. In other words, the prototype allowed us to discover a design problem that went unnoticed when looking at a wireframe.

Objectified - Gary Hustwit

Gary Hustwit's Helvetica is a great documentary film about typgraphy, graphic design, global visual culture, and the way type affects our lives. Now he has produced one on objects. This 90-second trailer looks quite interesting — looks as if I will have to add another Hustwit film to my library.

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

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. Luckily, a wide range of techniques employed in information architecture, journalism, usability engineering and interface design are available. All that’s required is the knowledge to combine them effectively. This article presents a practical framework for designing and implementing audio-based content, such as podcasts.

They Broke It

The crystal and ceramics company Waterford Wedgwood, whose roots go back 250 years, has been placed in administration, or what is called bankruptcy protection in the United States. While high manufacturing costs, declining demand for luxury goods and a weak dollar may have precipitated matters, this is not a credit-crunch story - it is a history lesson.

While the product is still good, the marketing is dreadful. The company has been both profligate and miserly - it has hired hot designers, but then has scrimped by not spending money to change the molds; as a result, contemporary design is crudely imposed on 100-year-old shapes.

Can the same be said of today's instructional designers, "learning design is crudely imposed on 100-year-old shapes."

Jobs, Training, Rapid eLearning, Inhibitory Skills, & Learning

Changing jobs, 1 in 5 say they will in 2009 - JobRadio.fm

Twenty-three percent of workers are dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with training and learning opportunities provided by their current employers.

Training isn't a luxury -- it's a necessity - The Wichita Eagle

Decision makers often view employee learning and development as a cost center rather than a profit center. Areas not directly linked to revenue generation are typically easier to whittle away. However, research shows that cuts in training development can go much deeper and resonate noticeably longer than business leaders may initially predict.

What is the TRUE cost Rapid eLearning? - Weiterbildungsblog

Anyone that has worked in a large corporate environment is more than likely familiar with the boring Voice-Over-PowerPoint sexual harassment training that is out there. This is a horrible example of rapid eLearning! ... Granted, there are a few good examples of rapid eLearning, but the majority of people using these tools don't have the first clue about quality/engaging eLearning.

And from Lee Graham:
PROS:

• Fast time to market.
• Usually pretty cost effective.
• Can be created by subject matter experts (SMEs) instead of teams.

CONS:

• 99% of the time its not very engaging.
• SMEs are not always the best trainers.
• SMEs are usually not designers and their presentations show this.

Do Inhibitory Skills Improve with Practice? - Developing Inteligence

Concentrate on what you want and can do; not what you do not want and can't do.

The ability to suppress unwanted thoughts and actions is thought (by some) to be crucial in your ability to control behavior. However, alternative perspectives suggest that this emphasis on suppression or "inhibition" is misplaced. These perspectives, largely motivated by computational models of the brain, suggest that alternative abilities (such as the activation or "active maintenance" of wanted thoughts and actions) are the real underlying mechanisms of inhibition and suppression.

Tetris for Trauma? - Newsweek

Interesting study that show how we have a finite processing capacity for each of two kinds of information: sensory/visual/spatial and narrative/meaning.

Playing Tetris soon after viewing the gory film clips reduced the number of flashbacks the volunteers had from just over 6 to about 3. It really did look as if the visuospatial demands of Tetris blocked the consolidation of the traumatic visuospatial memories. (Tetris should not interfere with memories for new facts, but you should probably think twice before playing it right after you tried to memorize a map or something else with a lot of visual or spatial content.)

Chaos Begets Chaos - Seed

Does this mean we need to keep our learning environments clean and free of clutter?

When an envelope visibly containing a five-euro note was left hanging out of a mailbox on a sidewalk, 13 percent of the passersby snatched it up. When the same mailbox was covered in graffiti, however, more than double the number of the pedestrians (about 27 percent) stole the envelope.

eLearning Salaries, Flat, Transformation, Embedding, & Training Video

e-Learning 2009 US Salary and Compensation Report - eLearning Guild

The Average Salary is Less:

• Time Period - Average Salary
• May-05 - $67,347
• Nov-06 - $74,623
• Dec-07 - $78,723
• Dec-08 - $78,436

In addition, there appears to be Gender Bias - the salaries for men working in e-Learning have increased, the salaries for women have decreased.

Air Force Releases 'Counter-Blog' Marching Orders - Wired

Bloggers: If you suddenly find Air Force officers leaving barbed comments after one of your posts, don't be surprised. They're just following the service's new "counter-blogging" flow chart. In a twelve-point plan, put together by the emerging technology division of the Air Force's public affairs arm, airmen are given guidance on how to handle "trolls," "ragers" -- and even well-informed online writers, too.

Is The World Really Flat? - Harvard Business School

That's the question posed by Amar Bhide in his new book, The Venturesome Economy. Disputing Thomas Friedman, author of The World is Flat, Bhide concludes that: (1) it isn't, and (2) arguments by Friedman and others - whom he labels as "techno-nationalists" - fail to recognize how innovation that matters really occurs and aren't always helpful to long-term global or even U.S. development.

(1) it doesn't matter where in the world high-level research takes place, because (2) its findings travel easily and at relatively low cost, but that (3) as one progresses from high-level to ground-level products and services and from high-level to ground-level know-how, ideas travel less easily.

Is "Transformation" a Better Concept Than "Innovation" to Guide us Forward? - Nussbaum On Design

We are having a great conversation on one of the most important subjects in our lives-how we can change our broken institutions and out-dated culture to survive and thrive within 21st century forces. The reasons why I think the concept of "transformation" is of great utility and power than "innovation" at this point in time.

How to Embed Almost Anything in your Website - Digital Inspiration

Learn how to embed almost anything in your HTML web pages from Flash videos to Spreadsheets to high resolution photographs to static images from Google Maps and more.

The OMG-WTF Spectrum - Logig + Emotion

1980's Wendys training video - YouTube