10.31.2006

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 10/31/2006

The Perfect Thing? - Internet Time Blog
The iPod came at exactly the right time, the convergence of storage, DRM, battery life, and media. More than that, the shuffle metaphor is right for our time.
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What type of minds to nurture? - BBC
According to Howard Gardner of Harvard University, there are at least five kinds of minds that we should be developing: : disciplined, synthesising, creating, respectful, and ethical.
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There is nothing like data...... - Gene Expression
...to ruin a perfectly good theory. So says Beth Visser and colleagues in the latest edition of Intelligence. She tested Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences (MI), gasp!, empirically. Also see Gardner's response.
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Wiki's world - Wiki's World
In August, Jimmy Wales, the founder and chairman of Wikipedia, sent out a message to the huge, anonymous army, tens of thousands strong, who regularly contribute to the English-language version of the free online encyclopaedia. His message was crisp and to the point: We don't want necessarily more, we want better.
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Why Wikis Are Conquering The Enterprise - Internet News
Unlikely as it may seem, wikis are now being adopted by enterprises large and small more quickly than celebrities adopt African orphans.
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10.29.2006

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 10/29/2006

Web 2.0lier than thou - Rough Type
The process of social enlightenment always begins with the reshaping of language. According to Lessig, Web 2.0 is not, as you might have assumed, a technological or a business term. It's an ethical term, a moral term. Differences "in business models," he writes, "should be a focus of those keen to push the values of Web 2.0."
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Business Intelligence: Get with the Process! - Manage Smater
Employees who know how to make the most of automated processes are assets, but what if getting them to use those systems presents yet another hurdle? It could be that your employees either don't find the systems easy to use or easy to integrate into their workflow.
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Outsourcing 'endangers HR' - CIPD
HR departments are being undermined by cost-driven recruitment outsourcing deals that do not take enough account of quality.
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Surviving In A 'Flat' World - Knowledge@Wharton
Economic theories describing how companies compete trace back to 1776 with the publication of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. Some two hundred years later, Michael Porter developed his famous value-chain analysis. Now, technological, cultural and other changes are challenging these traditional analytical frameworks.
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Is Second Life Converting Visitors into Residents? - Micro Persuasion
Hitwise has published some interesting data that reveals that share of US Internet searches for Second Life are up 73%. Visits to the SL site are rising too. On a year-over-year basis, visits to SecondLife.com were up 219% from the week ending 10/22/05 compared to the week ending 10/21/06. Hitwise also notes that the virtual world skews under 45.
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10.26.2006

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 10/26/2006

Gestures Offer Insight - Scientific American Mind
Our body movements always convey something about us to other people. The body "speaks" whether we are sitting or standing, talking or just listening.

Digg This: Talking to Gen Y - Business Week
Today's demographic trend is impossible to ignore and has big implications for workplaces across America. Seventy million Americans who belong to Generation Y (born between 1977 to 2002) are entering the workforce in massive waves. Add Generation Xers, who are now in their 30s and early 40s, and you have millions of employees whose visions for their jobs differ from their parents' and most of their bosses' old command-and-control management theories.

Pop Art Recommended for Beginner to Intermediate Level Photoshop Users - melissaclifton.com
If you are a fan of pop art then you're probably already well acquainted with the work of Roy Lichtenstein, who became one of the leading pop artists of the sixties with his comic-strip paintings.

web 2.0 isn't a cure-all - eelearning Beta
There's been a bit of excitement about a new application called slideshare.

Building Communities and Sharing Knowledge (video - 53 min) - Connexions
The "open access movement" is based on a set of intuitions that are shared by a remarkably wide range of academics: that knowledge should be free and open to use and re-use; that collaboration should be easier, not harder; that people should receive credit and kudos for contributing to education and research; and that concepts and ideas are linked in unusual and surprising ways and not the simple linear forms that textbooks present. NOTE: downladable to Mac or PC.

10.22.2006

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 10/22/2006

Colour guidelines - InfoVis
Cynthia Brewer in her page Color Use Guidelines for Mapping and Visualization proposes a set of recommendations for the use of colour in cartographic and visualisation applications that we intend to review here in summarised form as a complement of the previous article.

Learning Links - Elliott Masie
LearningLinks will be a peer rated, free, non-commercial site that will allow any learning professional around the globe to add, use, rate, and review learning links. Our goal is thousands of links submitted by our colleagues.

Free Your Mind; a Neuroscientist Claims He Can Unleash Creativity by Boosting Low-Frequency Brainwaves - Brain Connection
The aim is to push the brain into a state of near-sleep to produce the slow rhythms, known as theta waves, associated with this state. It's the kind of relaxed state in which ideas often come to you. It occurs naturally if, say, you are driving on a motorway and realise that you don't remember the previous few minutes.

Truly Authentic Leadership - U.S. News and World Report
The only valid test of a leader is his or her ability to bring people together to achieve sustainable results over time. There's no such thing as the "One-Minute Leader" because real leadership requires years of development and hard work.

Video of a Song Composed Entirely of 37 Cello Parts - Google Video
A video of Ethan Winer playing 37 separate cello parts to create one song. He even plays the percussion parts on his cello. It was recorded on 23 tracks using 37 plug-in effects. He spent hundreds of hours on this project so its worth a listen.

10.21.2006

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 10/21/2006

Crowdsourcing Creativity - Micro Persuasion
Crowdsourcing was first coined by Wired Magazine earlier this year. It's a process where businesses faced with tough challenges don't try to come up with all of the answers themselves. They tap into the collective wisdom of millions of amateurs around the world to come up with a solution.

Learning Networks and Connective Knowledge - Stephen Downes
Stephen Downes has published a paper for the ITFORUM discussion group. He turned it into a wiki for all to read and edit.

Bramble Bushes in a Thicket - Cognitive Edge A book chapter on the relationship between narrative and learning networks.

Malcolm Gladwell on Neural Networks That 'Solve' Complex Problems - How to Save the World
Although neural networks (collectors of massive amounts of data that then seek 'meaningful' patterns in that data that can be used to infer causality or at least correlation) have been around for years, most students of complex adaptive systems believe that complex problems (like global poverty, global warming, or lack of innovation in big business) can never be 'solved' because there are simply too many variables (perhaps an infinite number) to allow any kind of exhaustive correlation or useful predictive models to be built.

Straight Dope on the IPod's Birth - Wired
In 2000, Steve Jobs' candy-colored iMac was leading the charge for Apple's comeback, but to further spur sales, the company started asking, "What can we do to make more people buy Macintoshes?"

10.16.2006

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 10/15/2006

Multi-ontology sense making; a new simplicity in decision making - Dave Snowden
Ontology is derived from the Greek word for being and it is the branch of metaphysics which concerns itself with the nature of things. In this article it is used to identity different types of system, each of which requires a different approach to both diagnosis and intervention.

Conversation as a Core Business Process - Jay Cross
Consider for a moment that the most widespread and pervasive learning in your organization may not be happening in training rooms, conference rooms, or boardrooms, but in the cafeteria, the hallways, and the cafe across the street.

How Much Information? - SIMS
Around the world about 600 million people have access to the Internet, about 30% of them in North America. With the world's population at 6.3 Billion, that means about 9.5% have internet access. It seems the world is not so flat for a majority of the population.

Knowing Knowledge - George Siemens
George Siemens new book is available as a wiki. Knowing Knowledge is an exploration of knowledge - what it is, how it is changing, and what it means to our organizations and society.

The Rules of Distraction - Slate
Longer browsing sessions during class tend to lead to lower grades, but there's a hint that a greater number of browsing sessions during class may actually lead to higher grades.

Will the eBook finally replace paper? - The Hindu
Textbooks are seen as a major growth market. Only 900 of the 150,000 titles MBS Direct handles are eBooks at present, but McKiernan says there's a lot of interest, not least in the distance learning market. "Students are very mobile and it?s easier to store books on a laptop than carry them around." Most eBooks are the same price as the printed version or lower, in some cases 50% cheaper. Via Online Learning Update.

E-learning firm has retained losses of 27m pounds - The Post.IE
WBT Systems, the e-learning firm that was recently bought by Horizon Technology Group, had retained losses of 27.1 million pounds at the end of 2004.

10.15.2006

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 10/15/2006

New Systems for Sharing Learning Goals - HeadspaceJ
I think the intersection between learning goals and social software is heating up. The popularity of 43 Things must be contributing to the interest.

Go and Learn - Fast Company
Although we might not ponder the educational value of these everyday appliances, the gear we use to communicate and play can also be used to learn; we just don't yet think of them as learning tools. Mobile learning is the great invisible elephant in the room, in our pockets, in our purses, and in our cars.

Distance learning booms - The Journal Gazette
In the past few years the number of students taking courses via the Internet or another distance-learning method has skyrocketed.

Free Hugs ReUpload - YouTube
The Tipping Point: A Visual Demonstration: A wonderfully-crafted and moving YouTube video about 'free hugs' shows how public sentiment reaches a tipping point and then shifts dramatically as a result of it. Via How To Save the World.

The Amazing YouTube Tools Collection - Quick Online Tips
A collection of several YouTube third party tools which enhance your YouTube experience.

Quote of the Week - Steven Pinker
"Another major discovery of cognitive psychology with implications for general education is that the untutored mind is prone to systematic fallacies and biases. Most physicians, for example, make whoppingly inaccurate estimates of the probability that a person has a disease given a positive test result and the disease's base rate. The mind seems to have trouble grasping basic statistical facts such as that a person with the typical signs of a rare condition probably does not have the condition, that exceptional cases will regress to the mean, or that relaxing the standards for reporting an uncertain event will increase both hits and false alarms."

10.12.2006

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 10/12/2006

Media-Convert
Media-Convert is a free web application that allows you to rip a movie to your iPod: Mac or PC.

Can Internet communication sustain us? - CNN
Internet users tend to have a larger network of close and significant contacts -- a median of 37 compared with 30 for nonusers.

Experiential Learning - You Tube
The Real Learning Company's unique approach to experiential learning.

Wanted: Authentic Leaders - Forbes
Authentic leadership--which includes judgment about pace, framing and what and how to disclose information--is a commitment to serve the growth and adaptability of those you lead.

What is the worth of words? -- Will it matter if people can't read in the future? - MSNBC
Perhaps, in that not-too-distant future, we might wake up one morning to read an editorial like this:
December 25, 2025 - Educational doomsayers are again up in arms at a new adult literacy study showing that less than 5 percent of college graduates can read a complex book and extrapolate from it.

10.08.2006

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 10/8/2006

Changing the Rules: Lessons from a Starfish World - Chang This
Such seemingly dissimilar groups as the Apache Indians, music swapping programs, Wikipedia, Alcoholics Anonymous and Al Queda have one thing in common: they are all starfish. Each of these resilient groups succeeds because they are absent any hierarchy (head) and conventional organizations (spiders) best watch their backs.

Go and Learn - Fast Company
Although we might not ponder the educational value of these everyday appliances, the gear we use to communicate and play can also be used to learn; we just don't yet think of them as learning tools. Mobile learning is the great invisible elephant in the room, in our pockets, in our purses, and in our cars.

E-learning comes of age - Computer Business Review Online
Research firm IDC forecasts that ongoing compliance-training efforts will spur 27% compound annual growth in the e-learning system market over the next four years, with e-learning product sales growing from $6.5bn in 2003 to more than $21bn by 2008.

Engage me or enrage me - Management-Issuers
More managers and leaders ask me "how to engage" and "how to innovate" than any other questions. And of course these are two sides of the same question - because innovation engages and engagement innovates.

eLearning Guide - US News and World Report
This Guide lays out detailed information gathered directly from more than 2,800 traditional colleges and virtual universities. Includes articles and top 20 lists.

10.07.2006

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 10/7/2006

Generation Y Discusses the Baby Boom - Motley Fool
With nearly 78.2 million baby boomers driving our economy and 330 of them turning 60 each hour, there's clearly a transition on the horizon with fiscal implications all around.

Google Launches Universal Gadgets - Wired
Google Gadgets have gone universal. The search and services company announced today that anyone can put its Google-powered widgets on any site or blog.

YouTube for Grownups - Forbes
Patient surfers willing to wade through the often puerile contributions will be rewarded with hard to find screen gems, nostalgic news reels, instructional videos and even well-produced, albeit homemade, knee slappers.

The Best: Movies in the Public Domain - Wired
Need a movie for your training session? Many can be found on the archive.org.

Empathy pays off at work - Seattle PI
In this job market, it's not just who you know, or even what skills you've mastered. It's how well you understand other people that will get you ahead.

10.02.2006

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 10/2/2006

Rise of the web's social network - BBC
While most social networking sites do not discriminate, and allow anybody to log on, a few sites have cropped up with a very particular sort of user in mind.

Is Gagne Relevant for eLearning Courseware Design? - eLearning Technology
As instructional designers, we need to use models like Gange, but we also need to be creative. It takes me five seconds to add a little extra cheese and garlic salt to my kids Kraft Mac-n-Cheese, but man does the extra stuff make all the difference in the experience.

Technophilia: Get a free college education online - Lifehacker
There's one important catch: Most of these courses cannot be taken for any type of degrees or credentials. But remember, Bill Gates was a Harvard dropout.

High-tech campus offers art, tech gear industry pros envy - San Diego Union Tribune
When Canyon Crest Academy opened, students were so eager to attend that they endured classes in trailers. Two years later, with the completion of the $103 million construction project, the cutting-edge, high-tech campus is providing students with art and technology equipment that industry professionals drool over.

Steve Wozniak on The Colbert Report - You Tube (video)
Podcasting, computers, books, and pranks.