Waiting for the 2nd Marshmallow

First Congregational Church, 1126 SW Park, Portland, OR

Power to change your mind
2010 Illahee Lecture Series
Jonah Lehrer

Going to lectures for entertainment made me feel “of a certain age.” But I don’t regret going to this one. The lecture addressed our ability to exercise the skills we need as not so hapless primates to use our minds to:

1. Identify when we’re being manipulated by powerful emotional messages. Like advertising
2. Make the right long term decisions to despite the irresistible pull of the “now.” Remember Mischel’s Marshmallows and the children who could wait for the 2nd Marshmallow? See example/resources linked below.
3. Change our position or situation when attempting to solve problems creatively.

Another important point about creativity and effective problem solving that Lehrer reiterated was.  Being an outsider to the system often gives you an edge when you need to creatively solve problems.  (Innocentive.com leverages ‘outsiders’ all the time to do this)

Here’s the mindmap of my notes on the lecture. (You can click to view a larger version)

View the larger version on this mindmap (sorry it took so long)

The talk really got me thinking of the ‘ideal’ place for creating great products. Here’s a snapshot of what it would look like. This is just a start.

• Have access to a lovely park, meadow or wooded area.
• Play is encouraged.
• Good mix of playful types. Not too many people who are overly concerned with looking ’silly.’
• Place for yoga or meditation.
• People kindly remind you when you’re ‘banging your head against the desk.’
• Useless rules are questioned or even broken.
• Sometimes take the time to solve problems that have nothing to do with your field.

Resources after the fact:

• Mischel’s Marshmallows (Radio Lab Broadcast)
• Walter Mischel

#dl09-User’s Point of View – Iphone instead of Laptop

Scary… I started typing Rupert Murdoch’s last name and three letters in and it typed the rest for me.

Love, love, love…

• I can hit double space and it puts down a period. Unfortunately,  I’ve been trying to do this this morning in e-mail and WordPress and it doesn’t seem to be working.
• Can easily create mindmaps using an ap called SimpleMind Express.
• Perfect for short messages and phrases like tweets.  Eventually I’ll get to writing in full paragraphs.
• Copy and paste works great once you get the hang of it.
• Sharing photos and diagrams I create on the phone is easy.

Absolutely abhor…

• Come on put the Delete key farther away from the Return.
• Selecting that tiny bit of text at the top of the field is a b—-.
• WordPress ap doesn’t save all my changes each time I hit save $#@#!!!!!

Best Aps…

• Facebook
• Tweetdeck
• SimpleMind Express

Although I’m thoroughly sick of making mindmaps, I think for taking brief notes while folks are talking in a preso, this is good.  It’s also excellent for real-time sharing and discussion during events.  I found myself tuning into what other people thought or were thinking during the keynote and other presos by using the #dl09 twitter feed.

As long as I am not sharing or presenting at a conference,  it’s completely possible to leave that extra 5-7 pounds at home and still participate and document things adequately.  I love simplicity.  I am taking some time to review the posts I have here and add notes or reflections on what I learned, specifically; how I might be able to apply directly or indirectly what I was able to pick up.

Overall, I think DevLearn 2009 did a pretty good job of encouraging and leveraging the connectivity via online social networks during the conference.  When asked what she learned at DL09, one woman noted that she discovered that her phone was not powerful enough.

I will say that over the weekend my iPhone sat unmolested in it’s charger most of the weekend after I came home from the conference. Good iPhone… now you can rest a bit.

#dl09- Formalizing informal learning

Preso Description – NA couldn’t find one.

Dublin presented.

See chart I will add reflection later.

This was a particularly helpful session.

Some of the key takeaways:

1. The concept of  “Informal Learning” is not new.
2. Between Formal and Informal Learning there is a Grey Area that when asked if a learning piece should be “Formal” or “Informal” we respond… “It depends” (on context, audience, nature, etc.).
3. Process for Formalizing Informal Learning Includes:

• Step 1: Get Organized
  • Agree on problem and what success will look like
  • Determine metrics
  • Identify key stakeholders/audiences
  • Formulate approach
• Step 2: Get Oriented
  • Agree on scope
  • Understand organizational factors
  • Identify weaknesses in current state
  • Identify milestones
  • Recruit
• Step 3: Get Smarter
  • Architect solution components
  • Develop detailed design
  • Integrate into larger system
  • Mobilize
  • Test, learn, iterate
• Step 4:  Get Real
  • Continue to learn and iterate
  • Listen and communicate
  • Check your metrics
  • Support and institutionalize

#dl09- Leveraging Amazon.com for learning

Presentation Description

Key take aways:

1. We don’t leverage data we collect to improve learner experience in the now

2. Amazon uses 3 things to personalize user experience: user created content (reviews); analytics/data; collaborative filtering

3. Personalization can be scaled see white mindmap.*

* I think we should keep the following chart in mind when we are developing solutions in Drupal.

Why design small?

Small meaning for mobile devices.

It may not apply to what we do now, but I’ve always thought it was important to engage in what if thinking. Not just to follow trends, but to consider all possibilities also sometimes thinking about different environments and iterations helps you see more applications and possibilities.

#dl09- Eric Zimmerman & Games

Eric Zimmerman – speaker at 11/12 Keynote address.

@Natnotes@

Checked with our library about getting his book. “Rules of Play.” I think that this book will be helpful in designing the User Persona “Choose Your Own Adventure” activities, and more.
Game design (this guy is some what abstract in his thinking and perhaps in in presentation style) but he seems to tie all the information together somehow. See the mindmap detail.

Big picture thinking: how can we create a game/participatory culture to foster informal (and formal) learning online and offline?

Also I think working with the team to brainstorm different applications to our work.

Also, I think it’s important NOT to label somethings as ‘games’ because some people (management) might dismiss their value and usefulness if you use this tag.  Sad, but it’s still true.

Got me thinking about possible games. I wish I could allow others to contribute to this mindmap online.

#dl09- New media literacies learning library

New media literacies is a cool organization that promotes the teaching of new media skills such as creating mash-ups, user response content and media. For example I could use Little Big Planet to create a game around the plot devices for Beowulf

This project began in 2005 with a grant from the MacArthur Foundation under “Digital Media and Learning Initiative”

Learn more about this group and this initiative here:

http://www.newmedialiteracies.org/files/working/NMLWhitePaper.pdf

4cs of participatory learning:

• Connect
• Circulate
• Collaborate
• Create

12 skills for new media literacy:
1. Play
2. Performance
3. Performance
4. Simulation.
5. Appropriation
6. Multitasking
7. Distributed cognition
8. Collective intelligence
9. Judgment
10. Transmedia navigation
11. Networking
12. Visualization

Check out

http://www.newmedialiteracies.org

Natnotes @great way to empower learners & a model for 21st century learning@

Their site is a resource for K-12 educators that includes the following:

• Research to support techniques used
• Learning Library (items in the library include pieces, videos, examples, presentations, techniques contributed by actual teachers and students)
• Strategy Guidelines
• You can add the media library to your group

How does this apply to us?

This is user created content that has a tagging and search system in place. It might be helpful to learn from them how the put this together? How they govern it.

This group is leveraging social networks to promote shared learning.

#dl09- Team use of xml authoring

Presentation Description

Benefits:

• XML structured language
• Separates content from code.
• Portable and reusable.

Using XML w/ Captivate:
1. Create file in captivate
2. Put content
3.Export to XML
4. View in eclipse (open source editor).
5. Find your content. U can change
text in this file
Color of text
Font
6. Now u need to import XML to see changes in Captivate.
7. Captivate project caption to close captions. To export to word document.

Write application that communicates between tools.

You could get content management system to talk to XML to talk to flash.
Yay!!!!

He demos how to change opacity of fade out.

Manifest file is like a table of contents.

Adds filter to image in flash timeline “glow_blue”. (pre made coding)
Changes attributes to filter in XML.

In XML u can create new attributes thing like filters in XML. And then apply tag to objects such as text, images, etc.

#dl09- Enabling user generated content

Presentation description

Post conference reflection:

This was the best presentation I attended,  i think. Perhaps my perspective is a bit stilted because I love the idea of developing a program that truly engages users to develop and govern content.

Also, it seems that although this project focused on developing a community for creating user generated content, it’s aim was to develop content that was formalized. Tests used for certifications (?).

A lot of work went into identifying and prototyping the process for all phases and identifying SME (Subject Matter Expert) participants.  I believe we can take away the major phases of design and implementation from the model shared with this project and evaluate how we can apply it to our own projects.

————————-

How to scale?
1.Hire the right people (love what they do).
2.Have acess to community of dedicated.
3. Define rules of engagement.
4. Allow water cooler talk.
5. Holy Grail of scale get people to help other people.

Cisco learning network based on wiki

Exam colaboratory
Help incorporation of certification holders

Why?
Create a collaborative environment for item development.
Tap into a larger group of smes
Increase involvement of targ audience
Exam security.

Natnotes@
I heart this presentation@

Phases–
$$$$Zero phase
1. Define icentives
2. Define expectation
3. Define workflow
4. Build wiki interface used for collab
5. Recruit smes
6. Teach smes
7. Use out if the box people to manage dev of architecture. @This is key@

Example of incentives -
altruism (doing to help others)
100 pts for a book
StATus

Sme management:
Recruit and select
Make them feel part of ateam
Qualification test for smes
Virtual onboarding
Virtual orientation meetings

Define workflow (kiss- keep it simple):
Author writes item
Posts item
Peer review
Internal review
Author makes changes
Item is accepted and notified

Natnotes @this is a huge involved project. I love. @

$$$$Phase 1 Pilot:
Define pilot variables.
What did u learn from pilot?
Best practice prove the concept before you scale up.
What resources do u need to scale up?

MEtrics metric metrics
How long did it take to produce item
Review item?
How many revisions did it take?
How much time per reviewer.
Sme attrition rate.
Explain why they dropped.
Sme satisfaction
Smes tracked their time in a worksheet.
Anonymous online survey. Vovice?

Pilot was sucessful.
113 usable items
7certifications

What they learned from pilot
Review honor system no go
Need to set up expectations
Incentivize review process
Attrition rate high
Writing skills vary
Some smes didn’t get it

Incentives best practices.
Provide value.
Tap into intrinsic values too.
Make sure that the focus is not simply into the rewards.
Avoid diluting the value of what your giving away.

Question &&. How do u prevent item duplication????

Exams in English.
Collaborate with other languages Maybe not formal.

<<<>>>

$$$$$Phase 2 expansion operationalize

Phase 3 implement:
Where IT really comes in.
Automation

IP considerations
Determine what you want to protect.
Set up your agreement.
Work with ur legal dept.
See if satndard non disclosure will work.
Make sure orig items are presented.

Questions@ how long did this take?
What changemanagement challenges strategies?

Devlearn from my i phone

Pleas exxcuse the typos I’m typing from my Iphone.

What are my challenges with elearning?

Andrew McAffee speaks:
It’s important to convince company execs.

Asks does anyone here find their company intranet easier to find things than the web only 5 people raise their hand. Duh .

Altruism:
Rely on peoples good will
Don’t allow anonmynity
Important to lower behaviors to encorage altuism.

Freedom and flow of information:
Jimmy wales doesn’t want to use newpedia. The process is laborious and clunky.

Walk away from assumption that bad things happen. Allow people to self select and organize their own learning and info needs. YAY!

Use tagging.
Undo and redo.
Use voting.

My question how can we leverage drupal for this?

I’m still typing. Check refresh for an update.

INNOVATION
Best predictor for how a problem got solved was the diversity of scientific interests of the people that were looking at it. Not their iqs or degrees. I’d say pushy leadership or people who want to claim credit for the ideas doesn’t help either.

Build communities that people want to join.
Find ways to build participation.

Intelligence of crowds.
Ex – us 2008 election – polls done by professionals but developer of 538 website used his knowledge and algorithms to predict electoral vote breakdown. Helped by strangers Result: Margin of error about 15.

Enable peer review.

Benefits business stuff:

Don’t do this, dudes:
1. Declare war on enterprise
2. Allow walled gardens to flourish
3. Don’t accentuation neg
4. Declare war on email
5. Fall in love with bells and whistles
6. Don’t over use the word “social”