Meaningful Conversations on Twitter

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This is a very interesting assessment of the exchange that goes on in Social Media like Twitter. I can see the incremental increase in relevance. I’ve been really learning about the value of Twitter over the past few weeks.  The author, Rajesh Setty, notes that exchange on Twitter doesn’t really extend past the third level in this chart. This is engagement with others, not the engagement between oneself and the actual information you may find on Twitter. From this perspective, at least for me, Twitter actually does have a great deal of “Immediate and Future Relevance.”

I’m finding that Twitter not only connects me with more information relevant to my interests and my job, it also is helping me connect and learn about others through their blogs. I get an introduction to these folks via Twitter that I would never get from just a search for a different topic. Also, sometimes people’s skill with what I call the “Twit Wit” actually draws me to learn more about them and their blog. There is a certain “speedy Zen” about Twitter that I”m finding increasingly appealing. Even though Twitter is a bit limited when it comes to sharing and exchange, it’s a great doorway into the worlds of it’s many participants.

Fighting Management Preconceptions about Social Learning

I just found this wonderful preso on Social Learning. I kept on slapping thigh laughing as I read… “Oh yeah, that’s a good one!” For me the highlights were:

Yes, Play is OK - you need it to grow innovative, collaborative and fast-adapting employees.

“Control is an illusion” – Okay… this is where I slip into incredulous teenager mode: Duh! You can control what people are learning and sharing about as easily as you can keep water in a sieve.  The presenters note that “80% of learning happens outside” of formal learning systems in their control. This is “Informal Learning” in action. The faster leadership realizes that building a company culture where learning is valued, the quicker they will start fostering a truly effective organization. Also, it’s very important to build the expectation that employees are really responsible for learning (their job and how to enhance their work).

People already share bad information - no kidding. Everyone has experienced the grapevine effect in a workplace. Human beings honestly seek knowledge about the goings on, some need it to function and work effectively without fear. They will even speculate on management’s behavior when they have no information, which is why transparency is less dangerous than keeping your lipped buttoned.

I also really liked the fact that they provided some solutions for measuring ROI (Return on Investment).(CRUD: I actually wrote this section but it got lost in the blog ether when I was trying to save my post)  I think it’s possible to tie a company’s increased success to social learning initiatives through anecdotal stories.  Also, connecting increased levels of innovation could also be possible. Think James Burke’s Connections (the show from the early eighties). Much of the show argued that the worlds most famous and influential innovations such as the combustion engine would not have happened if people did not make connections with each other.  I think if you analyzed the history or development of a particular innovation at your company you can actually trace the connections that were needed to make the innovation happen. You may be able to identify whether or not these connections would have happened with the social networking  efforts in place.

Some excellent points were made, but I suspect that no amount of brilliant arguments will convince the hardcore curmudgeons that insist that Social Learning/Networking is bad and evil. My only question… Can I work for the folks who made this presentation?

Overcoming Top 10 Objections To Social Learning V2

View more OpenOffice presentations from Mzinga .

Schools, Please Don’t Kill Our Creativity

At a workshop I attended yesterday, Barry Dahl mentioned this unforgettable lecture by Ken Robinson at the TED conference. In his incredibly adroit and humorous talk, Robinson maintains that schools today thrash the creativity out of kids. I would argue that the final death knell takes place once they enter today’s corporate work world.

In another inspiring lecture, Tim Brown, the CEO of IDEO champions the importance of play in productivity of design and innovation.

Tim Brown Teaches Adults How to Play at a Lecture

How can we, as educators promote creativity and play in our classrooms, while teaching important knowledge and skills? I feel that developing curriculum driven by “student created content” is key to developing the creative minds that will build our future. I don’t know about you, but as an old doddering woman, I would rather live in a world built by the next designer of earth shaking technologies and innovative policies that help promote progress and not in a world populated by people who are fettered by rules that squelch creativity and productivity.

“It’s in the making of things that kids actually do their learning”

(Exerpt below is from an article I wrote for our company blog.)

Creating content in schools extends past the traditional class-report or diorama making. I found this wonderful example of the King Middle School in Portland, Maine. I believe that this school is really putting the approaches to 21st Literacy Education in a Action. The video provides examples of how the school integrates subjects like science, English, math with technology education.

Click the photo to view the video. Note the video will open and play automatically in another browser window.

The kids participate in truly constructivist activities, by developing videos, artwork, and collaborating on the development of music and music scores. All of these activities and projects require formal knowledge in writing, math, science, research and history that used to be taught to students via textbooks in an isolated context. Here are a few quotes from the short film that really captured my attention:

“We don’t use textbooks, per se… we do a lot of research in class.”

“The approach is to bring out the best in every student.”

“It’s in the making of things, that kids do their learning.”

The school also partners with businesses like a local printing press to develop products. The students work together as teams to develop items such as books for the press. These students also have the opportunity to work with professionals like the professional documentary maker who help them improve the quality of their videos. They get real-life experience and are encouraged to stretch and deliver quality projects. They are not coddled or isolated from doing ‘real work’ because they are not ready to do it on a ‘professional level.’

As I finished watching the video, I realized that many teachers might have issues with the fact that some students contributed 7 pages of work to a final project while some contributed only three paragraphs. I like the attitude that these teachers at King have that “Everyone does what they can.” Plus everyone should contribute to the project using the skills and talents that they have. Perhaps a student who needs help with math but has kinesthetic talents can choreograph a dance, and teach the other students how to perform the dance to be included in a final project. A student who lags in writing but has design skills might lead the team that develops the costumes or set. Both students are exercising their communication and leadership skills in helping other get their tasks done. Students who are better at writing can help coach these students when they have to do the written component for the project.

I think the comment that sums up the value and power of this approach to education was made by the kids of King Middle School themselves, “No one feels stupid here anymore.”

Why wasn’t I born twenty years later? I would have loved to go to school in a place like this. Seeing examples like this really makes me excited about the work we do here at PLS because I believe that in what we do we strive to make learning experiences effective and powerful.

Is Web 2.0 over complicating things?

Technology allows me to be an ‘on-the-fly’ sort of tourist. I don’t have things planned out before I get to a destination like my parents did. They had travel agents who got them packaged tours where everything from morning wake-up to afternoon snack and evening meals were all scheduled on a daily plan. I shudder to think of enjoying travel in this way. I might read extensively about a place and it’s neighborhoods before I go, but if I know that I can have Internet access when I’m there, I pretty much leave it up to the moment. When we were vacationing in San Francisco, I did my usual thing… went straight to Google maps and searched for places that I wanted to see or needed to visit: food, shopping, neighborhood historical spots, or the nearest Rite-aid to buy a replacement pair of pantyhose. When I was searching for eating places and boutiques, I noticed that a number of places had websites. A number of restaurants sounded good, but they just had too much ricketa-racketa (flash) on their websites. Come on! I just want a menu… or maybe even photos to look at. I want to know what you’re store, business or restaurant has to offer. A few sites required me to download a plug in. Others sites seemed like some design nightmare similar to some conceptual art experience designed by an irritating esoteric character from Nathan Barley. Worse, important information like ’store hours’ or a phone number was often hidden under some cryptic heading other than the obvious ‘about us.’

I actually thought if their websites are this pretentious, then they must be pretty annoying. Ergo, I didn’t want to give them my business. The funny thing is some small mobile devices don’t play Flash very well. Often the information I needed could just be on a list. Yes, from a consumer’s point of view the web needs to be simple and easy to use. As Jakob Nielsen put it:

“Most people just want to get in, get it and get out….For them the web is not a goal in itself. It is a tool.”

Pushing bells and whistles or other advanced features may be too much if you’re forcing them on users. On the other hand, people should be restricted to just using the ‘tried and true’ methods. Mr. Nielsen argues that focus on Web 2.0 development and applications is causing many website builders to forsake good design. But I think there’s a growing market/audience of people who know how to take advantages and use the newer web technologies. To be fair to these pioneering web developers… they’re still trying to figure out what works and how to make it work well. Though many business successes have demonstrated the power of social networking through blogs, wikis and social networks/online community. A product or service can take off if a few connected users or mavens start talking about it on the web.

From a web educator’s point of view, the web has great potential to bring people closer together and these tools are more than just ricketa-racketa. Also, users can work collaboratively to develop content from written text, to music, podcasts. They can even build on concepts and enrich discussion with video sharing.

If you read this article… Nielsen sounds kind of like (excuse my words) an old fogy… who predicts that people’s use and behavior with and on the Internet will not continue as they grow older. He predicts that Internet use will go down as people age. For the sector of society who will become more involved in the ‘creative’ and ‘technology’ economies this will not be the case. And, of course their use of the technology will change because technology changes. Something just tells me that Mr. Nielsen or his perception and vision of things is sort of …. stuck. Maybe things will be this way for me when everyone is plugging directly into USB (or some kind of electronic) ports or even buying cyborg bio-add ons… I just won’t get it or understand. (Of course, you know I’m joking about the cyborg thing… well sort of).

Invasion of the Video Mashup

An internet video mashup is just a re-mix of of video and audio content which is shared on the web.

Future tense has a great brief podcast on the trends of video mashups (1/3/2008). Notably it features the idea that much of the re-mix of content from films and music may eligible for ‘fair use‘ law protection. This makes sense since re-mixing content to express a new or different interpretation doesn’t mean that people are using the content as it is for ones own gain. This is a potentially touchy topic because on one hand we want people to re-mix and re-interpret content because it facillitates change and progress; on the other hand, taking and using content from those who worked hard to create it doesn’t seem right if someone else profits from it. Though I doubt that anyone has made any money re-mixing Soprano episodes.

Though I wonder how many legal departments and copyright lawyers must have their wheels running on overdrive right now trying to figure out how to nip this movement in the bud. Is it too late to do that? Large numbers of teens have made re-mixing of content to their own interpretations a way of life. This is simply how they react to the content they see. I think it’s exciting… because you can interact with this content in ways that you could not in the past.*What does this mean for copyright law in the future?

Innovation Tip: Surround Yourself with a Few Sharp and Inquisitive Newbies

Great article from the NY Times: “Innovative Minds Don’t Think Alike”

One of the key messages of this article is you need partner the experienced with the inexperienced and make sure that the newbies have a voice in any team. Looking back at history this may explain the stagnancy of bureaucratic governments and cultures. Ah ha…. but this may be hard for those who believe in a pecking order or the value of the experienced over the inquisitive. It must be terribly difficult to get this idea across to organizations or even professions that are structured hierarchically… Oh, well, they loose out.

Notes from Karl Kapp’s Talk on Games and Gizmos for Learning

http://karlkapp.blogspot.com/

Digital Natives want electronics….

Kaybee, FAO Schwartz and Toys R US have all declared bankrupcy (NL: That’s sad…having manipulative toys is a key part of childhood, not to mention developing hand-eye coordination and motorskills)

Information and knowledge are the thermonuclear weapons of our time.

Era of Baby Boomers and their technology

• Color Television….
• Disney’s wild world of color… technology that drove things… 1 way broadcasting
• Passive ways of absorbing tech

Need for War Stories in the Workplace (Knowledge Management)

• Lockheed Martin hiring 14,000 in a year
• US Defense department will loose 500,000 people
• Average age of retirement is going down (59)

Learning Styles

• Characteristics of Baby Boomers… formal learners
• Gamer Generation… informal learners

Games, games, games

• Casual games à Example you don’t know jack
• Girls play games
• 43% of gamers are female.
• Play PC games a lot more.
• Women over 40 fastest growing segment
• 70% use of Sims users are women under 25 (I am)
• Grounding kids - don’t send them to the room… Say…No Screens.

Multitasking and Absorbing all that information

• They like to think that they can multi-task… we don’t think so but they can…
• ADD??
• Kids can wipe out background distraction? Is this true?
• They have to deal with massive amounts of information. They’ve always had a lot of information.

Net-gen communication preferences

• Kids go to instant messaging from e-mail.
• E-mail is too SLOW. Again… e-mail is for old people
• Generation wants to share all the time and be virtual. Example: Twittr
• 85% of the kids have a media device
• 44% have two.
• 15% of 2-5 year olds have a cell phone.
• This kids are linked in…
• Internet has been around for 14 years

Gamers Characteristics

• Problem solver à can solve problems in game… some cases can apply outside of game
• Confident
• Resilient
• Social à Online social via games and electronica
• World of Warcraft make Clans of people
• Multitasking
• Informal Learners
• Don’t want to sit through 45 minutes of class when they can google to get the answer.
• 3D world where you get your own stuff.

My thoughts….There’s a diy movement right now I think that there’s no coincidence that this is happening as technology is moving us more into a virtual world.

People want to make physical things.

More games examples

• Laundering money in Second Life… Hey, vinny don’t forget the virtual cannoli…..
  Protosphere… 3D business environment.
• Kids are getting into these games earlier.
• Disney.com… kids get involved in games where they build their own business.
• Nobelprize.org… learn about history via games

What the teacher should be today…

• More of a guide rather than a lecturer
• Not my best friend
• Socrates was a really great example of a guide
• We should Teach young people to be observant.

Mobile Learning Examples:

• Example settting up a display in a store
• Taking SOP’s and putting them in a video with audio that can be viewed on a hand-held device
• Note some things translate better to video than others
• Flight simulator game…
  • Demonstration mode
  • Practice
  • Test
• Sales rep game
  • Teach a doctor how to sell pharmaceuticals
  • Choose your strategy

Discovering Information Literacy

As I mentioned before in my summary of the Distance Learning Conference notes… people who live and work in the world created by the internet and new technologies must learn how to effectively think, organize and be critical of the information that is placed before them.

Thanks to Judy from Hey Jude, I’ve found a great video that helps define the skills needed by this new generation of workers for the emerging creative economy.

Information Literacy Principles:

• D – Define
• I – Inquire
• S – Search
• C – Collect
• O – Organize
• V – Verify
• E – Express
• R -Reflect

Here is another video on the subject:

Summary Notes from the Distance Learning Conference – Madison, WI

Please note: I was able to add more information to the previous post. I will also link to the actual presentations once they become available on the conference website.

• Collaboration and Cooperation are KING/QUEEN
• Lecture is OUT – NO MORE SAGE ON THE STAGE
• It’s still always good to approach things with a critical mind. Technology can be good, but never loose your ability to question what you’re getting into
• E-mail communication is for old people

Not necessarily mentioned at the conference, but I still thought about it:

• Not everyone has access to the technologies/economic divide is tech divide

More detailed notes on the summary items.

Collaboration and Cooperation are KING/QUEEN:

New social networking and gaming technologies have rendered a generation of more cooperative and collaborative workers who see the corporate workplace as more of a level playing ground rather than a hierarchical dog eat dog structure the way the baby boomers saw it. This new generation isn’t as likely to hoard information like their baby boomer counterparts. Learning must take place in the forms of cooperative endeavors, and as a developer of online learning experiences you MUST help instructors build a sense of community among students. Asynchronous discussion threads and assignments that comprise mainly read and reflect activities are just not going to cut it anymore with the younger generations. People also learn using social bookmarking. Check out this post from Christy at Experiencing E-Learning which includes a video that introduces the concept of social bookmarking.

No more Sage on the Stage!!!!!

Stop turning class time into nap time. Stop lecturing and sharing in front of a virtual or live course using hour + lectures in front of a PowerPoint presentation. Students need to learn using the media they grew up with. Of course, they should still learn how to read, write and reflect, but still allow them to explore, document and share using digital media, video, audio, etc.

If you still believe that the old way is the ONLY way, watch this video. It actually does a decent job of sharing some college student’s feelings about attending school in an “Analog World.”

Digital Students @ in Analog Schools

In addition to being able to express their ideas creatively… these same students need to be able to develop critical thinking skills which allow them to continually question what is being put before them. These skills will make them truly flexible and creative and ready to deal with any changes put before them. Teachers and professors can leverage discussion that occurs naturally within social networking structures to promote or generate discussion among peers that allows them to develop these questioning skills.

It’s still always good to approach things with a critical mind. Technology can be good, but never loose your ability to question what you’re getting into

Don’t just accept technology and changes without thinking about the consequences critically. Think about how it can be used both for right and wrong. Millions of individuals are sharing personal information online (some of it incredibly personal). They are doing this by choice. Even sharing information via a meme on line can be problematic. As you share this information it is now possible to track relationships between individuals. I don’t want to sound paranoid, but perhaps this is not such a good thing now that I think about it. Also, how will learning using new media technologies continue to include development of essential traditional skills such as expository writing? Though honestly, I believe ALL LEVELS of education high and lower are failing students in their efforts to teach them decent writing skills. I believe the answer to this and all other concerns about educating in the new media are out there; however, we as educators need to take the initiative to come up with creative solutions rather than fight changes.

E-mail communication is for old people

Apparently this was the feedback of one prospective college student to a wooing college. She and others didn’t want to get information about the college in a glossy flyer or an e-mail. She wanted to interact with the media online. Others wanted to be able to participate in a live chat with university representatives and a real student who was attending there at the time. The long e-mail thread conversations also irritate younger folks…. use a wiki or discussion board to send out your thoughts. Hopefully there will be an active chat feature that can help you find the one or two original thoughts you wanted to come back to.

Email communication is for old people  -Ars Technica

PDX Bloggers Meeting, now I’m full of ideas… mostly babbling

So, yesterday, I broke out of my electronic bubble and went to meet other bloggers (and some podcasters) from the Portland area at a meeting sponsored by Intel and Jive Software. Imagine that this is the second time in this past month that I’ve gone out and met other bloggers. At some point I had to move out of this bubble because I have this human weakness which is I enjoy face to face contact and conversation. It really was a wonderful meeting and I thank Josh Bancroft of Tiny Screenfuls for posting the notice on it. It was really a sort of late/last minute decision to go attend, but I did and I really had a great time.

The wonderful thing about bloggers is that they are often curious people who search for things, connect things and see endless possibilities. They are also people who can evaluate things with a critical eye and ask questions like, “What does this mean for us? How will this affect us? Where can we go with this?” It’s wonderful being in a room with people like that because you come out of the room just bursting with ideas. I’m becoming convinced that the ability to make connections like these is the fuel for a truly creative economy. There was so much I learned from others this night I can’t possibly post it all here.

The twittering outside my head

Twitter was a regular topic in the conversations I took part in. Now I may be sympathetic to or understand the appeal of communicating snippets of your day to people in the form of actions and thoughts (Jane from Jane’s E-Learning Picks actually gives a succinct description of Twitter). There’s still something that freaks me out about being this transparent, even if I am choosing the people I share with. In a conversation someone noted that Twitter doesn’t really work unless you have a group of people you’re sharing with. Later, it occurred to me that I use Twitter, but just in my head all by myself. Sort of like it that way actually. I share my thoughts periodically in my blog, but somehow I like the idea of being an independent entity jumping on and off (social) networks.

The internet is making us psychic…NOT!… not?

Jessica (from OnPR ) noted that she read somewhere that Twitter is actually rendering its participants a little psychic. People could actually relate anecdotes or jokes that someone else might tell at the end of the day before that person could say it because they were privy to the snippets of their thoughts or actions during the day. This reminded me of an article that April shared with us earlier that day on how the internet may be causing some people to become prescient. The example cited is the posting on Wikipedia about the murder of Christopher Benoit’s wife 14 hours before they found her body. The article argues that the increasing transparency provided by the internet provides people with so much information that we can make better assessments and predictions about things:

…the increasing transparency that technology is continuing to create in the previously much denser information world is, among other things, creating situations where we can figure lots of things out that we just could not have figured out before.

Both this and Jessica’s point makes sense, because simply the more data you have, the better your guesses will be. Therefore, your guesses being fairly accurate, it may seem that you can somewhat effectively predict the future. Let’s not get overly excited here, it’s nice to be aware of this, but my gut feeling says we shouldn’t bank on using this ’super-power’ too readily. It gives me a bad feeling, the way the Nazi’s and Fascists zealous infatuation with some sciences gives me a bad feeling.

Translation is hard even though the world is flat

I spoke a bit with Audrey (Life of Audrey and Dyepot, Teapot) and we started talking about using translators to understand what other bloggers are saying in different languages. She noted that Japanese was very hard to get because the structure of the language was different. I noted that languages like German may have a different meter and sound a little funny when translated mechanically. Though anything even the thoughts in my head can sound funny when they’re translated mechanically. More the sentences in German seem so long and contrary to the abbreviated writing styles I was brought up to appreciate. I had to stop and think… I wonder what English sounds like to the Chinese when directly translated into their language. Although we may still have difficulty understanding each other’s spoken/written language, does it make sense that eventually on the Net people my generate their own language to compensate. It’s probably happened on some rudimentary level in chat with acronyms. But even the commonly used ones are still English based.

With an ‘increasingly’ infinite and scary universe of knowledge we live in we need some guides …. How about some Muses (upgraded for the 3^rd Millennia)

There’s been a lot of talk about how we now have access to so much more information via the internet and through social connections and sharing via the net that it seems like we need some guidance and inspiration on how to live in this new age of seemingly infinite possibilities. Later that evening after the dinner, I thought of the 9 muses in Greek Mythology. However, their subjects although still somewhat relevant seem to need a little upgrading. For instance Terspsichore the muse of dancing could become the muse of movement arts… her role is increasingly important because the ‘flatting of the world’ and the sedentary nature of life is causing my/our behind(s) to grow larger. We need to have rediscover our relationship with our bodies to stay healthy and whole. Thalia the muse of comedy could become “the muse of self-reflection over our fumbles and mistakes.” Clio the muse of history could take on the musing of Urban Legends and Pop Cultural history… she might even become the Muse of Marketing (sadly).