#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.

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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?

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 .

Okay… so now I understand what Twitter is all about

Image originally from the Morguefile. Click to view the original

I’ll admit the idea of telling people what you were doing at any given moment did not appeal to the side of me that adores my privacy. Also, being involved in conversations with others that absobed so much chatter didn’t spark the curiosity of that extremely methodical part of me.

Yet the side of me that has come to appreciate “Stream of Consciousness” really gets it.

But after first joining Twitter I can see what people like about it.

A few tricks I learned quickly to reduce the noise factor on twitter:

• The more followers/followees you have the faster the pace of the conversation. It’s good to search for conversations using “key words.” You can also save the chat
• You can easily save tweets you like by clicking the “Star” or favorites option.
• Just accept that you’re not going to get every piece of information being shared. Twitter is pretty ephemeral and it embodies that life of ephemerality characteristic of some aspects of “Internet life.”
• Make comments even ones that appear to have no point every now and then.
• If you’re sharing something cool include the link (be forewarned… if the link is too long you may not be able to share it. Hopefully, web developers out there whose pages require long urls are noting this. Or the twitter people might be able to develop a feature that allows you to associate links to text so you don’t go over the 140 character limit).
• Addressing someone directly requires including their Twitter ID (ie. @nlkilkenny) in your tweet or post.
• If you must, you can search through the archive of a saved search. Depending on the volume of a conversation you may be searching for sometime till you get to the beginning.

I’ve actually learned a lot this weekend on Twitter. Sorry to go off on a tangent, but I get this way when I learn a good deal of new and fascinating stuff.  I saved a search for Arduino technologies because I’ve very interested in learning how to make clothing and knitwear use electronic features using the Arduino Lilypad.

Arduino Lilypad

Can you imagine having a purse that’s hooked up to your cellphone so that it blinks a certain way when different people call? I’d also like to make some kind of garment (even just wristbands) for my brother that plays different sounds. He’s a musician that tries to bring traditional and non-traditional sounds and instruments together: OO-Ray.  I was searching through Make.com’s site and found some very fascinating applications with Arduino tech including this Fabric Synthesizer. What a wonderful way to showcase ingeniuity and creativity.

Art and textiles meet electronics and music

Second Life Events for Educators

If you’re interested in learning more about Second Life or how to use if for educational purposes, I suggest you take a look at this calendar: http://sledevents.blogspot.com/
Many events are listed here and even have slurls (secondlife link locations) that allow you to teleport directly to the site in SL. Remember, you have to have the SL application installed, and you can get that from the Second Life official website.

I was able to attend most of the Sloodle 101 class (that occurs every Wednesday 2x a day). I highly recommend it. Hopefully, I’ll have time in the next few days to blog about my experience in the class.

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).

Using WetPaint to Create A Course Wiki

I recently developed a wiki for a course that’s being tested right now, and I have to tell you… I’m quite amazed at the possibilities of using wikis for collaborative learning. After developing the course objectives, the SME and I decided to use the wiki as an essential part of the students’ learning experience. The wiki would be available as a companion collaboration area and a sort of explorative playground for the students. As one of the course foci was on teaching using Web 2.0 tools, we wanted to help immerse students in the actual experience of working and collaborating with others online using a wiki.

We decided to use WetPaint as our wiki tool, because of the easy to use WYSIWYG (you know I have to spell this out in my head everytime I type it – arconymitis) features and the fact that it’s so easy to embed video.

Here were some of the applications and activities we included in the wiki:

• A profile page - where students could share a picture, a few facts about themselves, favorite links (and possibly videos or other media). The idea is to help build community among the particpants and instructor
• A collaborative link section – that includes the major concepts in the course. As the students did their own research on the web on topics of their choice they would continually add and share the links to (articles, documentation, media, forums, etc.) with their peers
• A fun video sharing page – I included this because I wanted to introduce students to the idea of sharing video content… and the notion that sharing content online doesn’t just mean text, html pages, or print content
• An image collage activity - the goal of this activity was to collect images that describe both Boomer and Net Generations. The students work with each other collectively to post their images to the wetpaint collage
• Assorted graded activities where students collaborated on content
• Use of the forum threads to discuss content

I took a few approaches to designing the wiki structure and layout of the pages for maxium student participation. Nothing stinks more, than when you build a learning application and no one uses it.

• Keep everything as simple as possible – don’t put to many things on a page
• Post instructions – (or links to FAQ)s if you even suspect that people will not understand how to do or use something (.i.e. use “Context Sensitive Help” whenever you can)
• Model wiki behavior – Always provide examples and suggestions of contributions
• Lay Easter eggs – in multiple places. I actually started planting interesting links and content in different places. Keep putting new things in different areas to keep the wiki live and growing
• Make activities fun and light hearted – when necessary. Human beings (even stodgy adults) learn through play

The course seems to be going well. Students are contributing to the wiki so far, and I don’t think anyone has had any troubles with understanding how to use WetPaint (because it’s a fairly well designed tool). If you haven’t checked out WetPaint I seriously suggest that you take a look at it as a tool for collaborative learning.

An image of the “Community Links Page” – students share information on their research and finding on different topics

Amazing: “In My Language”

This made me think a great deal.  This is probably one of the best explanations or accounts of autism I’ve seen, and it’s told from an autistic individual’s point of view. Can you imagine… would this persons story and view of the world be communicated as easily without video-sharing (YouTube) and Web tech? Also, the video comments and feedback is just as though-provoking.

Teens use of social media on the rise

PEW Report on Teen Use of Social Media: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/230/report_display.asp

I was catching up on listening to my “Future Tense” podcasts when I ran across a report on one of the latest PEW research studies on Internet use. It looks like girls seem to dominate in use of social media while boys are more likely to post online videos. More, it appears that many girls have taken on the ability to super communicate through various technology.

Some noteworthy statistics from the report:

• 27% of teens polled maintained a personal webpage
• 39% of teens shared their own artistic creations online
• 26% re-mix content online

It makes sense that boys will tend to create videos that feature themselves; adolescent girls tend to be a self-conscious of their own appearance. However, this idea that their children have a presence visible to strangers must be more than unnerving for many parents. This is a given. The media certainly does their part in freaking out people even more by only highlighting what can go wrong when people’s children have a web-presence. I’m not saying that the dangers are not there, I guess I’m just a little weary of people taking the fearful approach to things rather than looking at what’s positive about the situation and then tackling the problematic and unsafe nature of things.

I’m just incredibly excited that these kids enjoy creating content and putting it online. They are for all intensive purposes, taking in what they see, re-interpreting it and then creating a product from their understanding. I’ve seen countless examples of Anime Music Videos (AMV) online that attest to this. Also, I ran across a wiki created by fans of the Avatar t.v. cartoon. The fans that create the content on this wiki are basically conducting some form of character and plot analysis when they post information. Fans that participate in the wiki content creation, young and old alike, demonstrate how engaged they are in the content. Why else would they be moved to do the work? It reminds me of my own childhood when I collected Star Wars bubblegum cards (geez, I must sound like a geezer). I had to go to the library and newstands to read more about the characters. There were countless comic books and pulp novels. I remember we used to lay the cards down on the floor and arrange them according to how the the characters were related to each other or when they appeared in the plot.  When we played with the cards we used to have discussions about what we thought would happen to Han Solo after being captured by Jabba or whether or not Han and Leia would get together and have kids. Of course, as I write this I realize that I’m probably embarrassing myself.

Still, even though it’s pop culture it still doesn’t mean that it’s beneath us. If we can recognize that we’re interpreting what we see in the pop stuff fluff or not and then scaffold into understanding other literature and art then that can’t be a bad thing can it. Maybe just we old stogies need to open up a little bit and look at how children and teens interpret the world through the media they see with clearer eyes.

Related Stuff:

Avatar Wiki About Page

Check out the Gamer Rater at Kapp Notes

Rate yourself as a gamer (1.0, 2.0, 3.0 or 4.0). Presented via Karl Kapp’s blog. Click on the image below to get to the post and read more about the Game Rater. You can evaluate what level of “Gamer” you fit into regardless of your age.
This activity was developed by his students, and they did a really good job of putting an old familiar activity (assessment tool or quiz/survey) into an interactive format.

As I explored this game/interactivity, I started to realize that there are some tech tools and processes that I feel comfortable with and some that I do not. I’m getting use to accessing information via small screens, and I think that like, Josh, I feel hindered when I cannot access information online. It makes me think… there must be growing groups of people out there like Josh who will avoid ‘non-connected areas.’ I start thinking of connected people or, in this case, ‘technocrats’ as types of fish who decide to school only in ‘wireless-friendly’ areas.

Are some of us adapting our lives to technology? I guess this has happened with just about everything we’ve become used to including, cars, radios, televisions, and p.c.’s.

2007 Statistics on Technology Users in the US

I’ve been looking for a better snapshot of what technology consumership look like. The Pew Institute released an interesting study which identified 10 different types of consumers of internet and technology. These types were determined by the possession, use and activity of technology assets (mobile devices, computers, cell phones, internet connection, etc.). At the top of the list “Omnivores” (8% of the surveyed) could be characterized by having a lot of gadgets and subscribing to many services. These individuals frequently participate on online social networking and expressing themselves via blogs, website authorship, etc. In contrast, the “Off the Network” people did not have cell phones or internet connectivity (15%)

These types were labeled as follows:

Elite Tech Users ( 31%)

• Omnivores
• Connectors
• Lackluster Veterans
• Productivity Enhancers

Middle of the Road Tech Users (20%)

• Mobile Centrics
• Connected But Hassled

Few Tech Assets (49%)

• Inexperienced Experimenters
• Light But Satisfied
• Indifferents
• Off the Network

More on technology and internet usage:

• Pew/Internet – Reports on Internet Evolution
• Digital Divide.org