8.29.2006

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 8/29/2006

Top 10 Best Presentations Ever - Know HR Blog
Just to name a couple: Turn Your iPod into the Ultimate PowerPoint Accessory - Micro Persuasion
Whether you are on Windows or Mac with a few simple steps you can turn your iPod (even an older one) into the ultimate PowerPoint accessory. I am going to focus on PowerPoint here since it's what most people use. The process is similar for Keynote.

Nature or nurture? - MSNBC
Boys learn more from men and girls learn more from women. That's the upshot of a provocative study by Thomas Dee, an associate professor of economics at Swarthmore College and visiting scholar at Stanford University. Via Jay Cross @ Internet Time Blog.

Google Discloses Plans For Long-Awaited Office Suite, First Components Due This Week - InformationWeek
"The right way to view Writely and Google Spreadsheets, especially in the context of a larger business, isn't necessarily as a replacement for Word or Excel," says Matt Glotzbach, head of enterprise products at Google. "They're the collaboration component of that."

Real Wages Fail to Match a Rise in Productivity - New York Times
In recent years, the productivity gains have continued while the pay increases have not kept up. Worker productivity rose 16.6 percent from 2000 to 2005, while total compensation for the median worker rose 7.2 percent. Nominal wages have accelerated in the last year, but the spike in oil costs has eaten up the gains.

8.27.2006

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 8/27/2006

Warren Buffett - a video trilogy - Life 2.0
A three part video series give fascinating insights into the life and work of Warren Buffett.

Web 2.0's Real Secret Sauce: Network Effects - Dion Hinchcliffe
The Web is the fabric upon which an ever increasing amount of our lives is woven into. This is now most media including newspapers, TV, radio, entertainment, music, arts, etc. as well as what I call lifestyle logistics; e-mailing, IMs, calendaring, travel planning, time/task management, and more.

Scientists Find Memory Molecule - PhysOrg
Erasing the memory from the brain does not prevent the ability to re-learn the memory, much as a cleaned computer disc may be re-used. This finding may some day have applications in treating chronic pain, post-traumatic stress disorder, and memory loss, among other conditions.

Balance (video) - YouTube
Riveting!

You(r) Tube - Hindustan
YouTube is the most happening thing on the Net. It's about how technology can make us reach a global audience from the comfort of our homes, and for free.

8.26.2006

knowledge and Learning In The News - 8/26/2006

August 26, 2006

A Taxonomy of Knowledge - The Atlantic
Not all books are created equal. To a librarian, at least, this truth is self-evident: some books are too important to lend out at all.

Fireside Chat: The Long Tail - Signal vs. Noise
The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. In this chat, the participants discuss the impact of the tail, mass amateurization, the role of reviews/recommendations, and how, in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 people.

Universities put Hollywood ahead of students - Boing Boing
One thing that's becoming increasingly clear from these factors is that students often need as much protection from their universities as they do from the entertainment industry's slipshod copyright enforcer thugs.

Ten Toes in the Multimedia Waters - Poynteronline
Old media certainly are trying new tricks. You might argue, though, that audio, video, picture galleries, podcasts, staff blogs, the deep background and interview tapes in big-story packages, are all new versions of us-talking-to-you. Using the Gillmor-Rosen terminology, these are more like enhanced lectures than true conversations.

Day of the Longtail (video) - YouTube
Video for rousing your 1.0 audidence before delivering your 2.0 presentation. Via Stephen Downes.

Music Makes Your Brain Happy - Wired
Through studies of music and the brain, we've learned to map out specific areas involved in emotion, timing and perception -- and production of sequences. They've told us how the brain deals with patterns and how it completes them when there's misinformation.

8.22.2006

knowledge and Learning In The News - 8/22/2006

Edward Tufte, Offering 'Beautiful Evidence' (with audio) - NPR
"If your words aren't truthful, the finest optically letter spaced typography won't help," he says. "And if your images aren't on point, making them dance in color in three dimensions won't help."

The knowledge drought intensifies - On Line Opinion
Unlike older - one is tempted to add, wiser - societies, today's Australians do not particularly venerate knowledge. Indeed, we have a richly contemptuous vernacular for those who work with their minds rather than with their hands or with money. Yet, paradoxically, we value highly what knowledge delivers to us.

Training Top 100 Training Magazine
Training Magazine's top 100 for 2006.

Service keeps constant tabs on your social network - Seattle PI
But these days, the notion of calling someone to make plans on a Saturday night seems downright Jurassic to a group of young, tech-savvy Seattleites. "That's so '90s," said Brian Westbrook, 28, a support manager at Expedia.com who reserves gabbing on the phone for emergencies.

Innaresting. Yahoo Aims at Google's Cultural Grammar - Searchblog
There's been some reports about how Google is trying to stop people from using the term, googling. When I heard about it, I was like, "Hello, gift horse, mouth!"....People don’t often do what you want them to do, and brands are more about what consumers think, than what companies want.

Trained Goldfish - YouTube
Here's a delightful video of trained goldfish responding to hand gestures.

8.20.2006

knowledge and Learning In The News - 8/20/2006

Ross Lovegrove on Form (video) - TED
Ross Lovegrove is an industrial designer, best known for his work on the Sony Walkman and Apple iMac. In this highly visual presentation, he presents his recent work-from furniture to water bottles-which is organic in form and inspired by nature. (Recorded February 2005 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 20:14)

The Great Unread - Nicholas Carr
What we tell ourselves about the blogosphere - that it's open and democratic and egalitarian, that it stands in contrast and in opposition to the controlled and controlling mass media - is an innocent fraud.

Human Connectivity - Blog Bytes
I once read a short story called "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut that presents a striking window into the human-cyborg connection today's technology seems to be bringing us. In this story, the law required smart people to wear a noise-making device and a pain generator as handicaps to keep them from thinking or performing better than their contemporaries.

Some co-workers don't have to work hard to drive you up the (cubicle) wall - Seattle PI
Like family, we don't get to pick our co-workers. But we are forced to spend eight hours or more a day in close proximity with them, protected only by a flimsy cubicle wall, if at all.

Breakthrough Discovery in Alzheimer's Research - SCI-Tech Today
Scientists have discovered molecular janitors that clear away a sticky gunk blamed for Alzheimer's disease -- until they get old and quit sweeping up.

The Expert Mind - Scientific American
Studies of the mental processes of chess grandmasters have revealed clues to how people become experts in other fields as well

8.12.2006

knowledge and Learning In The News - 8/12/2006

August 12, 2006

The 25 Greatest PCs of All Time
The IBM PC is 25. And here are the top PCs ever, from machines you owned and loved to systems you've never heard of.

Thoughts on the 20th Anniversary of the IBM PC - Dan Bricklin
As Julian tells it, to get around the secrecy restrictions during the wait, what evolved was something like this: One of us would say "Does it have slots for plugging in accessories?", and they would reply, "Well, a really good personal computer would have that, wouldn't it?", and we'd say "Yes", and they'd say, "Well, this is a very good computer." It was very funny, but we ascertained what each side needed to know quite well.

How to add a Google Map to any web page in 30 seconds - Wikimapia Blog
How to add a Google Map to any web page in 30 seconds.

Casual Is Working Full Time - LA Times
The sartorial style pioneered by the T-shirt-and-jeans-wearing technology moguls of Silicon Valley more than a decade ago has spread even to law offices, accounting firms and corporate headquarters — bastions of tradition that had kept generations of Brooks Brothers salesmen busy teaching customers how to fold silk pocket squares.

Older and Cranky May Mean Smarter - 14WFIE
New research suggests that older people with above-average intelligence tend to be disagreeable.

8.08.2006

knowledge and Learning In The News - 8/8/2006

Blackboard Patent - The Sky, My Friends, is Falling - Stephen Downes
eCollege has dropped the gloves and come out swinging against the Blackboard patent. "As one of the pioneers of online education, we launched our first customer's eLearning program in January 1997, before Blackboard even existed," said Oakleigh Thorne, chairman and CEO of eCollege.

THE GREATEST NANCY PANEL EVER DRAWN - The Woodring Monitor Sluggo falling or floating?

Scientific Knowledge Is Money in the Bank - Skeptical Inquirer
The scientific process is sometimes slow, but it always involves making educated guesses that eventually lead to predictions that can be observed and put to a test. If the predictions turn out to be incorrect, the test is still successful as long as scientists learn enough to modify the theory, find a better one, or uncover mistaken assumptions.

Taskonomies and Information Neighbourhoods - Green Chameleon
Taxonomies provide well-ordered, logical organization for well-structured retrieval, but "taskonomies" group things together that are required for any particular activity.

Diversity That is More Than Skin-Deep - Leader Values
Engaging diverse thinkers should be the goal of every organization for in doing so, it releases the organization to seek solutions that rise above the norm without cultural or social limitations. Organizations need to dig deeper by focusing on knowledge diversity for this is the cauldron in which creativity and success are brewed or fostered.

8.07.2006

knowledge and Learning In The News - 8/7/2006

Podiums, drum kits, and removing barriers to communication -Aug 6, 2006 - Presentation Zen
"Most songs are vocally driven. Yes, it is physically possible to sing from behind the drums... But they [audience] want to see you. When you're behind a drum kit, it is very difficult to connect to people. That is why I am out in front." — Phil Collins

What Is a Case? - Training Media Review
For students used to listening to lectures, the case method changes everything, most of all, the roles of instructor and student. No longer does the instructor assume the mantle of expertise and authority.

'Engagement' and the Underprepared - Inside Higher Ed
Two new studies suggest that not only does "engagement" work for minority and academically underprepared students, but such practices make a bigger difference for such students than for students in general.

The Word on Word of Mouth - Change This
There's a reason the subservient chicken didn't increase Chicken nugget sales, why the Segway (a.k.a "IT", a.k.a. "Ginger") hasn't changed the world despite drool-worthy P.R., and why Richard Branson descended a New York City skyscraper in a nude suit.

How the web went world wide - BBC News
The web was an overlay that tried to hide the underlying complexity of the data and documents proliferating on the internet.

8.06.2006

knowledge and Learning In The News - 8/6/2006

Leadership In The Wild - Forbes
Primal Quest is not just a race. It's one of the most difficult athletic events in the world.

Tufte and Powerpoint - Cognitive Edge
I have always loved Tufte's work on visualisation and it informs a lot of the design of Sensemaker. The counter to this which just came in the same list serve argues that because we have bad speakers powerpoint is a good idea.

GETTING OUT OF EMBED: The Role of Social Context in Decision Making - Change This
Decision making is an inherently social exercise. Here, Michael Mauboussin details three shocking psychological experiments that reveal just how another's action or opinion can profoundly change your own.

Whole Foods faces the "whole truth" - Talkshop
Recently, Whole Foods has been receiving flak from Michael Pollan, a well-known author and blogger who has accused the chain of being disingenuous in its claims of selling produce from local organic farmers.

CAN ADULT NUMERACY BE TAUGHT? A BERNSTEINIAN ANALYSIS - Gail E. FitzSimons
Four forms of interaction (visibility and accessibility, manipulability and annotatability, creativity and combinability, experimenting and testing) "represent the assumption that the learner will have an active engagement with the learning task and ensure that its execution and representation is in accord with constructivist learning ideas.

8.01.2006

knowledge and Learning In The News - 8/1/2006

August 1, 2006

Places to Go: The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning - Stephen Downes in Innovate
At first glance this online publication looks like any academic journal, but when readers explore The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (IRRODL), they are in for a surprise: They can read the articles! The journal is a member of the Directory of Open Access Journals.

KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY DEBATE NEEDS TO MOVE BEYOND PLATITUDES - IT News
The debate about the 'knowledge economy' is full of 'slovenly thinking and careless assumptions', The Work Foundation alleges today. Politicians, businesspeople and opinion formers around the world use phrases such as 'knowledge worker' and 'knowledge economy' as speech-padding buzzwords without having 'any clear idea of who or what they are talking about', a new study argues.

Clean air gardening and the future of shared experience - InfoWorld with Video
For a bunch of reasons, I'm averse to gasoline-powered lawnmowers. They're loud, they're smelly, and as I learned when my dad bounced a rock off his leg many years ago, they can be dangerous.

WHAT YOU THINK BUT DON'T SAY - Seed
People spontaneously categorize other people into 'us' and 'them' and they do that within milliseconds of encountering other people.

Innovation overload - Business Week
Innovation is in grave danger of becoming the latest overused buzzword. We're doing our part at Businessweek. And so is IBM with its big innovation marketing campaign.