3.30.2007

Collecting Knowledge and Learning - 3/30/2007

Stop Cyberbullying Day: Some Inspiration from the Blogosphere - Beth's Blog
This issue is so massive that it is going to take an ongoing effort from many different angles -- educatiing young people with help from teachers and parents as well as everyone who is using the Internet now - to model good behavior and continue to the dialogue around this.

The Wiki Workplace - Business Week
Some companies worry about the risks of uncontrolled communications leaking out. But a growing number believe the new collaboration tools are good for innovation and growth - they help employees connect with more people, in more regions of the world, with less hassle and more enjoyment, than earlier generations of workplace technology.

facetmap search visualization - information aesthetics
An interactive, query-driven data visualization technique for searching & browsing large, textual datasets, such as search results. Would also work great for a digital dashboard. Overview (html) and detail (PDF).

Slow Down, Brave Multitasker, and Don't Read This in Traffic - New York Times
Several research reports, both recently published and not yet published, provide evidence of the limits of multitasking. The findings, according to neuroscientists, psychologists and management professors, suggest that many people would be wise to curb their multitasking behavior when working in an office, studying or driving a car.

3.25.2007

Collecting Knowledge and Learning - 3/25/2007

CIOs use Web 2.0 to keep up with competition: study - Computer World
Forrester Research says 106 of 119 CIOs from companies with more than 500 employees that it surveyed are using at least one of these Web 2.0 technologies: blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS, social networking and content tagging. CIOs said adoption is being driven by gains in worker efficiency and fear of competitive pressures.

Modular Curriculum Development - The Pursuing Performance Blog
Modular Curriculum Development (MCD) is Guy W. Wallace/EPPIC's lean-ISD methodology for the development of T&D/ Learning/ Knowledge Management "Instructional Products."

What is the Meaning of The Medium is the Message - Mark Federman
We tend to notice changes - even slight changes (that unfortunately we often tend to discount in significance.) "The medium is the message" tells us that noticing change in our societal or cultural ground conditions indicates the presence of a new message, that is, the effects of a new medium. Via Signal vs. Noise.

Disrupting the disrupters and Next-gen biomimicry and New fields of peer-to-peer technology
New Developments in Innovation. Via How to Save the World.

3.24.2007

Collecting Knowledge and Learning - 3/24/2007

Innovation in Business Models - O'Reilly Radar
Model innovation is particularly effective when attacking an existing industry because the incumbents often cannot match the change because doing so would require massive organizational changes.

The Simple Test and Complex Phenomena - Hald and Hour
A very simple one-dimensional understanding will fare as well than a complex, nuanced understanding. People who understand a discipline as a set of one-dimensional principles will do the best - understanding simply becomes a case of picking which principle applies, then selecting the example that fits the best.

Is Training Just for Dinosaurs? - Collaborative Learning
How much can an organization afford to trust "information in the wild" for apprising members of what they need to know?

Swivel - Creative Generalist This is very cool: Swivel ("a place where curious people explore all kinds of data"). Basically, it's to charts and graphs what YouTube is to video and Napster was to music.

T-Groups, Feedback and Double-Loop Learning - Ed Batista
Feedback should be regarded as information that clarifies the costs and benefits of different behaviors, and we should change our behavior only if we decide that it's in our interest to do so, not simply in response to the feedback.

3.20.2007

Collecting Knowledge and Learning - 3/20/2007

Experts to students, "Adapt Now" - Innovation in College Media
While this is directed more at media students, a lot of this can be applied to instructional designers.

Are Designers The Enemy Of Design? - Business Week
Designers suck because they are arrogant. The blogs and websites are full of designers shouting how awful it is that now, thanks to Macs, Web 2.0, even YouTube, EVERYONE is a designer.

My Life as a Wikipedian - eLearn Magazine
Claire Gill draws a clear distinction between issues associated with completing individual versus group projects. Group projects are different, she writes, because a resulting site might "suffer from my missing content." I took that notion to heart and decided that I could no longer allow the world to suffer from my missing content.

Google acquires Trendalyzer - information aesthetics
Google has recently bought the rights to the Swedish statistics tool Trendalyzer for an undisclosed sum. Trendalyzer was part of the Gapminder Foundation, which became famous by professor Hans Rosling's lively speeches. To view one of his great TEDTalk presentations, click here.

3.17.2007

Collecting Knowledge and Learning - 3/17/2007

Some real data on Web 2.0 use - Tall Blog
Online services people are using and in what manner. PDF located here.

Slide design: signal vs. noise (redux) - Presentation Zen
Mackey's presentation in Berkeley is a wonderful example of a presentation by an intelligent, personable, and passionate leader that easily could have been insanely great but was not. Mackey's slides are a great example of slides that did not really do anything to help the audience. The slides were stuffed with text, small photos with superfluous animation, and Excel-generated charts so bad and so ugly it's hard to imagine a cheetah with only a cursory understanding of PowerPoint making anything worse.

Top Ten Psychology Studies - PsyBlog
Just because a study is old doesn't mean it's irrelevant. Indeed, the effects of many older studies are still being felt in psychology today. Generations of psychology students have wandered out of lectures, seeing themselves and other people in a new light. Via Mind Hacks.

Face-to-Face Trumps Twitter, Blogs, Podcasts, Video... - Creating Passionate Users
Face-to-face still matters. And in fact all our globally-connecting-social-networking tools are making face-to-face more, not less desirable.

3.15.2007

Collecting Knowledge and Learning - 3/15/2007

On Design - Eyetracking points the way to effective news article design - AUSC Annenberg Online Journalism Review
What if you could engage users in a story for about half the time, yet have them remember about 34 percent more of the content? That’s exactly what one test showed.

On Mind - Scientific Method: Relationships Among Scientific Paradigms - Seed Magazine
A map constructed by sorting roughly 800,000 published papers into 776 different scientific paradigms. Click on the image map for a super large jpg (it might take a few seconds to load).

On Leadership - The Most Influential People Follow Their Own Paths - eWeek
here are two ways to become a top influencer in any industry. One way is to be able to peer ahead, consider the trends specific to your industry as well as those in the social, technology, business and political climate, and create a product or service aligned with those trends. The second way is to put your head down, solve a problem that is in front of you now and figure that if you've solved it sufficiently well in some universal manner, you'll be noticed by a wider world. I'm talking here about Tim Berners-Lee, who, in trying to find a simple way to share scientific papers, was instrumental in creating the World Wide Web.

3.13.2007

Collecting Knowledge and Learning - 3/13/2007

America's Perfect Storm - ETS
On Education - Our nation is in the midst of a perfect storm, according to ETS researchers. The forecast is grim - unless we invest in policies that will change our perilous course. Via Fred Nickols in trdev.

Art of the Start - Business Two Zero
Video with Guy Kawasaki explains why it's essential to innovate - and how to do it.

Cell phones: A principal's view - Westside News
Technology is bold and innovative, and we all have to meet it with bold and innovative attitudes. Human history has demonstrated that societies that embrace and make an institution out of tool design, production and use, have the highest standard of living and are able to defend themselves from threats, and therefore tend to survive longer than those that do not.

COLOURlovers
On Design - COLOURlovers is a resource that monitors and influences color trends.

3.12.2007

Collecting Knowledge and Learning - 3/12/2007

Perhaps the convergence of forums, wikis and blogs is the next web 2.0 killer app - Collaborative Learning
Of all Enterprise 2.0 tools like wikis, blogs, tagging, the outsider the "discussion forum", might be the easiest to introduce and often with clear immediate value."

No Rest for the Wiki - Business Week
In late 2005, Intel engineer Josh Bancroft needed a tool that his colleagues could use to share company information, from historical highlights to progress of internal projects. Inspired by Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia assembled by users around the world, he devised Intelpedia, an internal Web site that draws on the input of employees companywide.

Instructional Text in the User Interface: Some Counterintuitive Implications of User Behaviors - UX Matters
Given a choice between reading and doing, users prefer to be doing. Users skip static elements, such as instructional text, because they focus immediately on downstream actionable objects.

John Maeda Goes Meta on Design - Wired
People are the best-designed objects in the world. Seriously. People can handle all kinds of crap all day long, and they're still alive at the end of the day. They're so robust. They can adapt to any situation. And they also know when to stop. For more, see Design by Number.

Apple a Generalist? - Creative Generalist
Maybe Apple is the great generalist of computer makers, producing products that work quite well for many people, but rarely for the specialized uses that require serious ongoing support from the manufacturer. Also see Computer World's Why Apple's 'consumer' Macs are enterprise-worthy.

3.10.2007

Collecting Knowledge and Learning - 3/10/2007

Davids versus Goliath: a comparison of wikis versus Blackboard CMS - ZDNet
can Web 2.0 tools truly replace something as big as a CMS? In my analysis, the answer is a resounding yes. Whereas Blackboard was designed for instructors, wikis were made for everyone. Blackboard is big, and has more features than most people will ever use. Wiki is small, and has one feature that's simple enough to be applied to any use. The fundamental difference between the two is this: Blackboard is something designed to do everything, and the wiki is something that can do everything because of its design.

Mitchell Baker and the Firefox Paradox - Inc.
Firefox, of course, is the Web browser that has established itself as the one serious competitor to Microsoft's utterly dominant Internet Explorer. Yet its products are free. Its work force is largely volunteer. Its meetings are open to anyone. It's a nonprofit. It may be the hottest tech company in America.

The Web 2.0 Bubble - The Atlantic
Few of the social networks have yet proved adept at truly linking people of like-minded interests, and many of the networks being started now, especially by entrepreneurs and corporations looking to grab their slice of 2.0 glory, tend to miss the reason the best sites work: They facilitate behavior that people already engage in.

10 Reasons Handheld Learning Rocks - Mobile Learning Ten good reasons why handheld digital devices can provide the ultimate quality, flexibility, and convenience for delivering mobile learning:

Subliminal images impact on brain - BBC
Using functional MRI brain scanning, the researchers found that during the easy task the brain registered the 'invisible' object although the participants were unaware they had seen it. But during the harder task, which required more concentration, the fMRI scan did not pick up any relevant brain activity suggesting the participants had not registered the subliminal image.

3.08.2007

Collecting Knowledge and Learning - 3/8/2007

The difference between innovation and invention - ZDNet
Developed nations spend $1,270 per capita per year to boost research and development and knowledge. But the returns are minimal. If you invent something and don't do anything with it your efforts are wasted.

6 ways to improve on knowledge management - unCOMMON KNOWLEDGE
The concepts behind knowledge management however, can make a big difference to you and your business — and best of all, they don’t cost you any money.

Fount of all wisdom - and foolery - Telegraph.co.uk
Deep down, though, we all knew Wikipedia wasn't that reliable. And its patchiness is glaringly obvious when a controversial figure, such as the paediatrician Prof David Southall, gets just a few lines, even though the Attorney General is reviewing cases in which he has appeared as an expert witness.

Free Book PDFs - EPPIC
Free PDFs from Guy Wallance - lean-ISD (recipient of an ISPI Awards of Excellence), T&D Systems View, and Management Areas of Performance.

Demystifying Salary Information - Simplicity Works Everytime
What should you be paid and/or what should your employees be paid -- online tools for salary negotiations.

Steven Pinker on the decline of violence - My Hearts in Accra
From the TED 2007 conference. I'm not sure how relevant this is to this collection of knowledge and learning links, but somehow it seems right.

3.07.2007

collecting Knowledge and Learning - 3/8/2007

100 Companies That Matter in Knowledge Management - KMWorld
About a year ago, Dr. Michael Koenig wrote in these pages that unlike many business "fads," knowledge management didn't fall into the typical 10-year pattern of boom and bust, with four or five years of explosive growth, followed by a slightly longer period of almost equally dramatic decline. His conclusion: KM is here to stay.

Gladwell and the use of rhetoric - Cognitive Edge
Gladwell uses scholarly source material in an essentially rhetorical fashion, to tell a story from a single point of view in order to motivate assent from the reader to a wider proposition.

Creative video presentations - Presentation Zen
A provocative treatment of layering text over dialog. Text appears as every word is spoken but done in a way to accent and emphasize and highlight.

Ten Core Principles for Designing Effective Learning Environments - innovate
Research findings into how our brains work (Bransford, Brown, and Cocking 2000; Damasio 1999; Pinker 1997) are stimulating a re-examination of traditional principles of designing teaching and learning experiences.

Web 2.0's 'digital mobs' attacked - BBC
Jaron Lanier, who popularised the virtual reality concept in the early 1980s, said that in rush to forge a new age of collectivism, we risk losing individual identities and dumbing down our understanding of the world. He coined the term "Digital Maoism". But trend expert Lauren Parijs, director of the Flanders District of Creativity in Brussels, said that while Lanier's view an "anti-movement gaining momentum," it remains very small.

3.04.2007

Collecting Knowledge and Learning - 3/4/2007

New Meme - Media I Consume - How about a change? - eLearning Technology
DIY discussions and some prior posts around PKM and Personal Learning.

News of DIY killing ISD has been greatly Exaggerated - Learning and Technology
As technology evolves the way in which we design instruction must also evolve. It is true that do-it-yourself learning is now possible. That is a great. However, can that open learning model be too open? Will all learners engage in the DIY process?

Companies failing to generate revenues from corporate know-how - UKPRwire
The focus is upon managing what is currently known, rather than creating new information and knowledge-based services, tools, ventures and businesses. Most knowledge management processes are missing an explicit knowledge exploitation stage.

Has Generation Y overdosed on self-esteem? -Christian Science Monitor
Over the past few decades the prevailing disposition among college students – today labeled Generation Y or Millennials - has slid into full-blown narcissism, according to a study released this week.

Is Most Published Research Really False? - Science Daily
The likelihood of a published research result being true increases when that finding has been repeatedly replicated in multiple studies. Obtaining absolute 'truth' in research is impossible, and so society has to decide when less-than-perfect results may become acceptable.

3.01.2007

Collecting Knowledge and Learning - 3/1/2007

Study: The Brain is Chaotic - Live Science
Why learning is sometimes messy.

Working Memory: A new model explains a lot - Cognitive Daily
Several links, including a two-part model of working memory.

The Favoritism Test - strategy+business
If we aren't careful, we can wind up treating people at work like dogs: continually rewarding those who heap unthinking, unconditional admiration upon us. What behavior do we get in return? A virulent case of the suck-ups.

Perceptive Pixel - Fast Company
The Future of Computing - video. For another video, see the demonstration they gave at the TED conference.

Free Photos - Yotophoto
Yotophoto is now indexing well over a quarter million Creative Commons, Public Domain, GNU FDL, and various other 'copyleft' images.