knowledge and Learning In The News - 6/24/2006

June 24, 2006

The Three Worlds of Knowledge - Learning Circuits
One of the most popular epistemology models (except in the behavioral sciences) is Sir Karl Popper's writtings on the Three Worlds of Knowledge. The knowledge/learning/management professions seem to prefer and stay within the realm of Michael Polanyi's concept of personal and tacit knowledge. However, Polanyi's epistemology is narrower and has a limited basis for understanding knowledge as compared to Popper’s work, which provides a broader epistemological foundation.

Why Minimal Guidance during Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching - Educational Psychologist
We are skilful in an area because our long-term memory contains huge amounts of information concerning the area. That information permits us to quickly recognize the characteristics of a situation and indicates to us, often unconsciously, what to do and when to do it.

What are knowledge behaviors - Knowledge Jolt with Jack
Behaviors associated with the idea of knowledge appearing in the interaction between people: sharing, helping, discussing, seeking, .... There are also knowledge behaviors aligned with the individual.

Knowledge-Based Economy Already Here? Academics wondering how much is too much theory - Ohmy News
The so-called "knowledge-based economy" would be a world of smart people, in smart jobs, doing smart things, in smart ways, for smart money, increasingly open to all rather than a few, according to researchers at the United Kingdom's Lancaster Institute of Advanced Studies.

Neuroscience Resources - elearnspace
A useful collection of neuroscience resources.

knowledge and Learning In The News - 6/20/2006

Eye movement, visual memory, and peanut butter sandwiches - Cognitive Daily
Experiments on change blindness have revealed striking limitations in visual memory. Yet new research shows that perhaps visual memory isn't as limited as once was thought.

The Weblog Project
The first open-source movie documentary about blogs and bloggers.

Colleges fail to tap training dollars - Columbus Dispatch
U.S. public and private em- ployers spend about $80 billion a year providing their employees with job-related training, Eduventures said. Private companies account for more than $50 billion of that, and spend about $13.3 billion on outside providers, it said. Colleges could meet the demand by customizing courses and marketing them more aggressively, Eduventures said.

Cubicle Culture: How brainstorming works best - Post Gazette
Some brainstorming sessions get off to a shaky start because the participants subscribe to a tenet that is provably false: "There's no such thing as a bad idea."

knowledge and Learning In The News - 6/13/2006

Gates: 'Information overload' is overblown - ZD Net
"I'd say in all of these cases, we are really dealing with information underload," Gates said in his talk, which kicked off Microsoft's annual CEO Summit. "We still want a lot of information."

On "Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism" By Jaron Lanier - Edge
When Jaron Lanier's piece on "Digital Maoism" first went out on Edge, I knew he'd be generating hundreds of responses all over the net. After talking to John Brockman, we decided to try to capture some of the best responses here.

Some Educators Fear Pull Results in 'a La Carte' Learning - Red Orbit
John Seely Brown, national consultant, co-founder of the Institute for Research on Learning and former chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, comments that, "Maybe the time has come to take a bold move and ask, could we radically rethink what schooling, formal learning and informal learning, could be all about."

Intranet 2.0: Collaboration, Self-Publishing And Tools Mash-up New Driving Forces - Robin Good
The internet is evolving from a channel for content distribution to a platform for collaboration, sharing and innovation – the so-called Web 2.0.

Intentions - The Sift Everything Expiriment
Creating art and creating dreams can be a long, tedious, intentional process. But both art and dreams require a set of intentions instead of a series of responses.

knowledge and Learning In The News - 6/11/2006

Connectivism and the nature of learning - Albert Ip
With the advent of communication and digital technology, we interact with more people beyond the immediate physical reach. We simultaneously participate in many communities.

The Art Of Motivation - Business Week
At Nucor the art of motivation is about an unblinking focus on the people on the front line of the business. It's about talking to them, listening to them, taking a risk on their ideas, and accepting the occasional failure.

Communities of practice: legitimate peripheral participation and lurking - Joitske Hulsebosch
Legitimate peripheral participation is an analytical perspective (LPP) that has to do with opening the practice to someone who is not a core member and who has something if not a lot to learn about the practice.

Wiki's -- Failure or Boon of Online Collectivism? - Will at Work Learning
My main concern with wiki's is that information from real experts can be stupified to the mediocre averaging of above-average minds.

The Next Big Thing: Spreadsheets? - Business Week
It's kind of funny that the original killer app for the PC is returning as a key service for the Web--by one of the guys who originated it, no less. Also, see Jay Cross' post on spreadsheets. And don't forget Dan Bricklin.

knowledge and Learning In The News - 6/04/2006

A Dialog with Thomas Gilbert - Learning Circuits
In the great cult of behavior, the appeal is to control or affect behavior in some way.

Reshaping Reality - Forbes
Reality is changing. Cheap, widely distributed bandwidth and advanced networking technologies are divorcing an ever-growing segment of the population from traditionally "real" constraints like geography and socio-economic status.

iWriter - Talking Panda
Incorporate text and audio files to create innovative learning programs.

Biased Myers-Briggs (MBTI) Research Wanted
CPP, Inc., known formerly as Consulting Psychologists Press, announces that it is offering research grants for research on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.

DIGITAL MAOISM: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism
The problem is in the way the Wikipedia has come to be regarded and used; how it's been elevated to such importance so quickly. A core belief of the wiki world is that whatever problems exist in the wiki will be incrementally corrected as the process unfolds.

knowledge and Learning In The News - 5/30/2006

CNET's AllYouCanUpload Is Disruptive - TechCrunch
CNET very quietly launched a simple new photo uploading site called AllYouCanUpload last week. At first glance it doesn't appear to be very special or disruptive. But it is.

Don't Try This at Home - Wired

The lure of do-it-yourself chemistry has always been the most potent recruiting tool science has to offer. Many kids attracted by the promise of filling the garage with clouds of ammonium sulfide - the proverbial stink bomb - went on to brilliant careers in mathematics, biology, programming, and medicine.

Deconstructing the MySpace Threat - Stephen Downes
Good post linking to and summarizing an interview with Danah Boyd and Henry Jenkins on the subject of MySpace.

What are knowledge behaviors - Knowledge Jolt with Jack
Shawn's list is primarily about those behaviors associated with the idea of knowledge appearing in the interaction between people: sharing, helping, discussing, seeking.

knowledge and Learning In The News - 5/29/2006

by Petty Officer 1st Class Marvin Harris

Knowledge Management: The Next Generation - CIO
Book excerpt from Stealth KM: Winning Knowledge Management Strategies for the Private Sector by Niall Sinclair. Today, most knowledge and information workers still rely on e-mail and voice mail for communication with individuals and teams.

Research Project: TagLines - via Micro Persuasion
TagLines is the visualization of the evolution of Flickr tags over time.

The Death of The Internet? - Youtube video
Major telecommunications companies are spending millions lobbying the U.S. congress to make the Internet into a private network.

Pull the other one ... how iPods took over the world - The Observer
This tiny object does a lot more than play music: as part of a larger system with iTunes and the iTunes music store, it defines a new relationship between customer and producer and reshapes an industry.

Adults Who Do Not Learn

There have been a couple of highly interesting responses to the news story, Third of adults 'not learning.' Frank Carver posted a comment, while Tony Karrer posted a blog pointing out that there was more to 'learning' that what was pointed out in the article.

Thus, it might be interesting to compare this study to another study done by Allen Tough, who was one of the first persons to really delve into the study of informal learning. His study showed that 10% were not involved in intentional learning. Since his study used intensive face-to-face interviews, the researchers could really probe and tailer the interview to fit the person. His conclusion was that these people who were not learning were actually quite 'content' at the time. Tough writes, "They learned how to raise their kids or do their job or whatever, but now they’re just sort of on a plateau, but life is good, it’s content, it’s not that they’re under extraordinary stress." Basically, they were taking a break from intentional learning.

He also mentions another study that looked at older people in a nursing home. The study found almost no informal learning taking place because it was a very repressive kind of atmosphere that presented absolutely no stimulation to learn.

The two studies basically only look at 'intentional learning' -- purposely learning in order to change one's life; rather than 'incidental learning' -- learning that occurs unintentionally or by chance. We learn incidentally because we are in the world. We learn intentionally because something in the world draws our interest.

Thus, I think we can start drawing some conclusions from the two studies. People learn 'incidentally' almost every day, while 'intentional' learning is on a continuum. On one-end are a small minority of people who are in repressive learning environments, such as people in nursing homes, holding two jobs and are too tired to set out to learn, and coach potatoes who lost interest in the world; to people who are 'content' at the moment and are taking a break from learning; to the large majority who are in the middle of the continuum and have one or more learning episodes taking place in their daily life; to those on the other end of the continuum whose lives are almost entirely composed of learning episodes, such as students or people learning a new job.

Exactly what the true percentages are seem to be open to debate. It is probably somewhere between the UK poll that used a survey to capture a large number of people and Tough's interviews that captured a smaller number, but were more intensive in their means. However, the percentage of intentional learning episodes in people's daily lives are increasing due to the information/knowledge society that we are now entering. This new information/knowledge society is really becoming a learning/information/knowledge society.

knowledge and Learning In The News - 5/28/2006

Wikis--a disruptive innovation - KM World
Overall, wikis increase the socialization process, enabling collaboration to generate at warp speed. Socialization underpins the sharing of ideas, and hence innovation capacity increases from wiki infrastructure.

Kevin Kruse interview - kineo (audio)
Kevin Kruse has been a voice of reason and insight in the learning field many years now, and the e-learning guru website is a great tool for anyone interested in e-learning.

E-Learning in 2012 - kineo (Breeze Slide/Audio)
New Technologies are at the heart of 85% of the way we learn today.

College 2.0: No Lectures, But Plenty Of Podcasts, Blogs And Text Messages - Tech Dirt
While some will say that this is a less personal approach to teaching, that might not really be true.

The Rise of Crowdsourcing - elearningpost
Having ordinary people 'create content, solve problems, even do corporate R & D'.

Knowledge and Learning In The News - 5/27/2006

May 27, 2006

A Sneak Peek At The Future - Forbes
A three-day conference, hosted by consultant and newsletter writer Mark Anderson, made a point of landing a wide variety of presenters and a diverse group of attendees.

Revisiting Communities of Practice: from fishermen guilds to the global village - Knowledge Board (free registration required)
After a recent debate at com-prac's about what is a CoP and what isn't, I ended up trying to find the root of the definition problem. What is a CoP? IMHO we've been running with a model that grew out of a very specific situation that is no longer predominant. If we want a model that truly reflects modern CoP behaviour, we need to take into account a number of changes that have affected CoPs

Can anyone own "Web 2.0?" - Boing Boing
O'Reilly Media have taken a ton of criticism for attempting to enforce a service mark against a nonprofit group in Ireland that wanted to have "Web 2.0" conference.

Widgets, Gadgets and Kapsules - On-Demand Functionality and Knowledge - e-Clippings
I think that as learning professionals we should care because the uptake of things like widgets reveal something about the preferences of our audiences.

The Wikipedia Death Watch - Business Week
That's one pitched debate over at Nick Carr's blog, especially in the comments following his original post pronouncing the death of Wikipedia.

Microsoft vs. Microsoft - Nicholas Carr
Microsoft is only truly alive when it's in a fierce fight with a competitor. The company "defines itself by its rivalries.