This year’s Institute of IT Training conference was another buzzy and stimulating event. Any thoughts of cutbacks and budget deficits could be cast aside temporarily as we gathered at a luxury hotel in one of the world’s most glitzy locations – London’s Mayfair (top property on Monopoly).

A recurring theme, at least for me, was on–demand learning, so I interested to come across this original offering from Trainer1. The idea is really simple. You’re doing a job, away from your desk, perhaps operating a piece of equipment or dealing with some emergency. You’ve got a phone (any sort will do) and you know the number to call if you find yourself unable to remember what to do. You call up and, using voice recognition, you engage in a ‘learning conversation’ with either a recorded voice or a text-to-speech program. You’re provided with the information you need in easy stages, step-by-step.

Phone2learn is what Trainer1 call, with tongue-in-cheek, ‘just-too-late’ learning – what you need when you’re up against it. And if you need your visual focus to be on the job rather than on a screen, and you’ve got a hand free to make a call (or a Bluetooth headset) then this might just be the option for you.

The flight from London to Newcastle this afternoon provided an ideal opportunity to remove one book from the pile accumulating on my desk. Not only did I accomplish this, I still had time for an exorbitantly expensive cup of tea and a KitKat.

The book I chose was, to be fair, a short one, the intriguingly titled Open Source Instructional Design by Nathan Eckel (IntelliDesign, 2009). One reason I had time for the cup of tea is that the premise for this book is a simple one:

1. Traditional instructional design sees the subject expert produce some sort of draft, which the designer then has to critique from an instructional perspective. This process is time consuming and adversarial.
2. Using the ‘open source’ model (the term is borrowed from software development rather imprecisely but captures your attention), the designer provides the subject expert with very basic design skills and proceeds to act as a coach and helper side-by-side with the expert.

I must admit that my usual experience is not the one described in point 1 above. If I was the designer, I’d want to interview a subject expert and have access to their materials. Then I’d produce a design, which the subject expert would approve. That’s a very different process, although still time-consuming and potentially adversarial – particularly if the subject expert insists on every detail of the subject matter being taught regardless of the possible learning outcomes. However, I do know some designers who work in the way Nathan describes – the expert provides something like a PowerPoint and then the designer takes that on and attempts to build a course from it.

I cannot see Nathan’s open source model being appropriate for top-end interventions, where there may well be an element of guided discovery (scenarios, sims, etc.) and/or rich media. I would expect to see this sort of project firmly in the hands of the designer. But for rapid development, where time is of the essence, this strikes me as a good model.

You could do as Nathan suggests and teach the expert the essentials of the ADDIE process. But then again, there’s always the 60-minute masters.

Chris Anderson’s article The web is dead: long live the internet, in the August edition of Wired magazine, has attracted a lot of attention, including mine, but for many the title of the article would mean very little. For the past five years I have been running 1-day workshops on learning technologies for new l&d professionals, in which I include a team quiz. The opening question asks, “When was the World Wide Web officially launched?”, with options for the 70s, 80s or 90s. Perhaps one team in ten gets the answer right – the 1990s – because they know the internet goes back a long way and they believe the web and the internet are the same thing. As we know, they are not.

The World Wide Web is a system which allows documents formatted using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) to be shared across the internet in the form of web pages, aggregated as web sites. Web pages are viewed using applications called web browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc.). The web was the creation of Sir Tim Berners-Lee (pause for God save the Queen) when he was working at CERN in Geneva.

As the diagram in Wired shows, prior to the 1990s, the internet was primarily used for FTP (file transfer) plus a little email and for newsgroups. By 2000 the web had become the dominant internet application, but contrary to what many thought, this situation has not continued.

I began to think of all those ways which I use the internet which does not involve me opening a browser:

• to store my notes in the cloud for sharing across devices (using Evernote)
• to store files in the cloud for sharing across devices (using Dropbox)
• to download music and apps (using iTunes)
• to communicate in real time (using Skype, WebEx, etc.)
• to prepare and publish my blog postings (LiveWriter)
• to make my tweets (Twhirl and others)
• to access news and other information on my iPhone and iPad (wide variety of apps)
• to send and receive emails (Outlook and iPhone apps)
• to automatically update operating systems and applications on all my devices

All of these offer major benefits in terms of convenience, usability and utility. They also offer enormous performance benefits when compared to web-based tools. They are not free and open in the spirit of the web, nor are they in many cases indexable by Google, Bing and others. Do I mind? No. The web is a vital tool for me, but it is the internet which is really making the difference.

I need your help. I’m working on a book about architecture, but not in the conventional sense. I’m looking at learning architects, those who design environments for learning in the workplace. I want to interview a cross-section of pioneering learning architects from across the world to try and ascertain their vision for learning and development at work and how successful they have been in implementing this within their organisations. In particular I’m interested in those who understand the importance of different forms of learning (experiential, on demand, non-formal, formal) and have been able to integrate these as a coherent and well-balanced strategy.

Who do you know who is doing (or has done) a great job of heading up an l&d team and who would not mind sharing a little of their success? I’d love to know.

In the meantime, here’s a little more explanation of what I mean by a learning architect:

Meet the learning architect

A learning architect designs environments for learning. Like the architect who designs buildings, the learning architect will be responding to a specific brief:

• What is the nature of the learning requirement? What knowledge, skills and attitudes is the employer (the client) wishing to engender in the employees working within the business, division or department in question? How will this learning contribute to effective performance?
• What jobs are carried out in the target area? How many people are doing these jobs? What are these people like in terms of their demographics, prior learning, ability to learn independently, their motivation and preferences?
• Under what constraints must this learning take place? How geographically dispersed is the population? How much time and money is available? What equipment and facilities can be deployed to support the learning?

The learning architect also has a professional responsibility to their client. This requires them to be fully conversant with current thinking in terms of learning methods, acquainted with the latest learning media and up-to-date with developments in the science of learning. As none of these is intuitive and obvious, the client cannot be expected to have this expertise. And for this reason, it is neither sufficient nor excusable for the learning architect to act as order taker.

The responsibility of the learning architect is to their client. As with the architect of buildings, other motives can come into play – the desire to experiment and innovate, loyalty to the latest fads and fashions, the glamour and glitz of the awards ceremonies – but should they be tempted, they risk failing to meet the requirement within the given constraints.

'Architect' might sound like a grand title for someone other than a head of learning and development or what the Americans like to call a Chief Learning Officer, but remember that architects of buildings tackle small jobs like extensions as well as office blocks and whole housing estates. They start off working with other architects and they gain experience over time.

You don’t become a learning architect by calling yourself one; you also have to behave like one. An architect of buildings does not carry the bricks or paint the walls, although they do keep a watchful eye on these activities in case their plans need to be revised or updated. They don’t have to supervise every activity, but they do need to watch the numbers, so they can react if budgets and timeframes are being exceeded.

The learning architect does not need to directly facilitate learning or be present in all those situations in which learning might be taking place. However, they must know whether or not the learning that is occurring is in line with their plans and their client’s requirements, and that all this is happening at an acceptable speed and cost. And because the only constant in the modern workplace is change, they must be agile enough to respond to shifting requirements, new pressures and emerging opportunities.

The BBC news website describes a new Ofcom report which surveyed 1138 adults in the UK to determine how they spend their time, in particular the media they consume. The findings are startling. The statistics suggest people in the UK spend seven hours a day – almost half their waking lives - "engaging in media and communications activities".

The article goes on:

“However, the average person actually squeezes in the equivalent of nearly nine hours of media and communications by multi-tasking on several devices. Television still dominates people's media habits, with the average person spending around 3.8 hours watching television every day.”

“However, it found that most people are able to cram in even more by multi-tasking. For example, the report found that adults aged between 16 and 24 appeared to consume the least, spending just six hours and 35 minutes a day on the phone, laptop, radio or television. But by multitasking - effectively using two or more devices at once - the survey found that young adults were able to squeeze the equivalent of nine hours 32 minutes worth of consumption into that time.”

Before getting carried away, it is important to realise that there are very real doubts about whether multitasking is actually possible. See my posts:

• A challenge to the multitask assumption
• The case against multitasking is building
• More multitasking madness

My guess is that what is really happening is that people are switching their attention between a background medium – TV, radio, music on their iPod – and something more vital and urgent like texting, reading new emails, using Twitter, playing a game or social networking. And it isn’t just young adults doing this – it would not be unusual to find me checking out information on my smart phone while my wide plays a game on the iPad, as we both watch a TV programme. When the programme gets interesting, our focus will switch, because you really can’t concentrate on two things at once.

The report came up with some other interesting data:

• Radio is holding its own - "It is still a very important medium for people."
• “Despite the growth in online TV services and devices that allow people to record television, most shows were watched via traditional live broadcasts.”
• “Internet take-up has now reached 73% in the UK, the majority of which is fixed broadband.”
• “The number of people using their phone to surf the web currently stands at 13.5m people. This has almost tripled since 2008, when the figure stood at 5.7m.”
• “Much of this increase had been driven by one site - Facebook - which accounts for 45% of all mobile web use in the UK, followed by Google at 8%.”

I could be accused of being a boring old fart by suggesting that people should get out more, perhaps taking the odd walk. They should still remember to take their smart phones with them, just in case – like me from time to time - they get lost and need to rely on GPS to get them home.

In an interview with MediaBistro, Seth Godin declares that he has given up on writing books. With 12 in the bag, he no longer thinks that the traditional publishing process is “worth the effort”.

“I like the people, but I can’t abide the long wait, the filters, the big push at launch, the nudging to get people to go to a store they don’t usually visit to buy something they don’t usually buy, to get them to pay for an idea in a form that’s hard to spread,” he says.

This is timely for me because, in the last quiet week before everybody gets back from holidays and chaos again resumes, I am desperately trying to finish off some of those longer-term development jobs that I’ve been putting off for months now. One of these is a book I’ve had on the go since 2007 entitled The new learning architect. Luckily the book is not technology-centric because otherwise I would have had to completely revise it several times over this period. The focus of the book is the overall architecture for learning across an organisation, something which does not have to move in internet time, as Jay Cross likes to call it.

Anyway, Seth’s comments are unsettling, because they bring back all the doubts I have about the sense of hard copy book publishing. I know there’s no money in it unless you’ve got a broad enough topic and a big enough angle to get you into the mainstream business book best seller lists. And that leaves you with the gamble that, having your book out there with a major publisher, will somehow reflect itself on your ability to make money from other activities. This is possible of course, but there are many other ways of getting your name around which require a lot less work.

So far, I’ve concentrated on producing short handbooks which can be distributed as e-books or given away in hard copy form as freebies. This has definitely worked in the sense that many thousands of downloads and give-aways have got my work in front of a wide international audience. But handbooks are one thing; books that require a fair degree of concentrated reading and deep reflection are quite another.

Here’s what I’m weighing up:

• Go the traditional route and hand over the whole project to the professionals. After all, my shelves are filled with their products and I owe a great deal to both the authors and the publishers for sharing their work in this way.
• Self-publish using an on-demand publisher such as Lulu. No prestige in this, but a bigger share of the proceeds. On the other hand, I have to do all the marketing and layout.
• Go the formal e-book route and aim at the Kindle, the iPad and the rest. I believe there’s a good chance that professional publishing will go this way, and I reckon these devices are up to the job.

What would you do?

I've had a number of discussions today about what really matters when it comes to the design of effective learning content. What has emerged, at least from my point of view, is a greater clarity about the considerations that drive decision making in both design and development.It seems there are three key factors all competing for attention, and that it's very difficult to concentrate on them all:

1. The first major consideration is the subject matter itself. How relevant is this to the target population? How timely is this information? Is it accurate, clear, concise?
2. The second consideration is the design for learning: What learning strategy should be employed? How can interactivity be used to support this strategy? How can the subject matter best be communicated using examples, stories, cases and demos?
3. The final consideration is the level at which to set the production values. How professionally should the content be presented? How novel and eye catching should it be? How rich is the media mix?

Clearly each of these is important to some degree. Which comes out top could depend on your role in the process. If you're a subject expert then obviously your focus is number 1. If you're selling design and development services, you may well differentiate yourself using number 3. If you're a learner (and rarely are you the one paying for any of this or ever consulted in any way) then your priority will undoubtedly be number 2. My guess is that most design and development teams focus on two of the considerations, at the expense of the other. Let's hope that the learner isn't the one to miss out.

In the past when I have heard groups express their dislike (if not complete hatred) of role plays, I have been sceptical that this opinion was in some way swayed by the bad experiences of the group in question - they had clearly in some past existence been badly bitten during or as a result of a role play exercise. However, I believe I have now heard the same opinion expressed by enough groups consistently enough for this to be regarded as a valid sample. So now it’s official – people hate role plays.

What’s particularly surprising is that (1) the population expressing the greatest dislike are themselves working in l&d and that (2) when asked how they would provide opportunities for practice, feedback provision and assessment of soft skills would typically come up with – you guessed it – role plays.

The purpose of a role play is to provide safe practice, typically of an interpersonal skill, such as interviewing or selling, in an off-job environment, almost always a classroom. By ‘safe’ we mean away from real interviewees or customers, so mistakes can be made without damaging real relationships. In practice, role plays are anything but safe, because participants are (or believe they might be) in danger of suffering the worst injury that can be inflicted on any adult, i.e. embarrassment in front of their peers.

Typically, role plays are acted out at a painfully slow pace in front of other course participants functioning as observers. For the brash and more confident amongst them, this is an opportunity to show off. For all others this constitutes a terror as great as they will experience without having to speak in public (which makes the role playing of speaking in public the most terrifying of all).

When you are determined not to make a fool of yourself, the last thing you do is experiment in a quest to learn from your mistakes; you stay strictly within the confines of your known abilities. For those who are beginners in acquiring the skill in question, even this is a problem, because they may well not yet have any abilities. If there was any doubt, the single skills practice (and there is usually only ever time for one) achieves only one thing: to confirm that this skill is harder than it looks and that you are a long way from acquiring it – you’ve moved from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence. In other words, you’re much worse off than when you came into the classroom.

I believe that learners would be more positive about role plays if they were able to have lots and lots of attempts and see some real progress. Unfortunately, much of the available classroom time is taken up with abstract theory (best covered, if at all, through self-directed learning) and watching other people do their role plays. Not a good use of time.

So how else can safe practice be achieved? One answer is a computer-based simulation – not easy to accomplish for soft skills without some pretty sophisticated software and even then limited in terms of realism and in what the computer can assess. Perhaps the best answer is one-to-one coaching; you practise with the coach and then, when you’re confident enough, you practise in real-world situations with the coach watching. This is expensive as an option, but may well be worth it because (1) the practice really is safe (no peers to be seen) and (2) you can practise as often as you need to. This coaching wouldn’t have to be conducted face-to-face; it could just as easily take place online using webcams.

Here ends my rant on role plays. Am I over-stating the case? Are there are other alternatives?

FastestTube is a browser extension that currently works with Chrome, Firefox and Safari (IE version on the way). It sits in YouTube and allows you to download any video in a number of formats:

This is a really useful facility. Previously I’ve used Voobys to perform this function but, by comparison, it’s a pretty untidy process. I like to have downloaded copies of my favourite videos so I can use them in presentations and workshops without needing to be online.

So which videos have I seen fit to download?

A vision of students today

Networked student (on connectivism)

Did you know?

Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us

Learning styles don’t exist

Shift happens (the original)

Social media in the UK 2010

Social media revolution

Tech bubble

Web 2.0: The machine is using us

The process

We think

Understanding Learning: The Affective Context Model

I was recently given a copy of Andrew McAfee’s Enterprise 2.0 (Harvard Business Press, 2009) by Martin Baker from LM Matters. I sat down to skim read it on the train – the one hour trip from London to Brighton is usually enough. I was delighted when I opened the cover to find that the job had been done for me in the form of a five-page summary produced by getAbstract. The abstract included the key 'take-aways', a comprehensive summary of the key points and a spattering of quotes. It did the job really well.

I’m still glad to have the book,so I can explore particular topics in detail when I need to, perhaps for a particular project, but the abstract gave me a valuable overview - certainly enough to know whether the book would have been worth purchasing.

Anyway, I know what the key benefits are of employing ‘emergent social software platforms' within the firewall, how to counter the most common objections, and how to make a success of implementation. I could share these with you, but that would mean creating an abstract of the abstract, and I think that with a topic of this importance that would be one level of abstraction too far.

I’ve just joined another Wetpaint site that seems to offer some interesting considerations of required shifts in communication strategies for educational institutions.  IN terms of communication, what can schools, teachers, administrators learn from students.  While the focus seems to be upon K-12 contexts at this stage, based on recent exprrience I think there is plenty [...]

It has been really interesting to watch Old Aunties attempts to embrace the possibilities of web2.0 and participatory culture. My favourite show on the one-way-box “Q&A” is an excellent example. It is very engaging to watch the video mash-ups submitted by pensioners and students alike, and hearing the challenging questions from the audience. Even just [...]

Are flash based Learning Objects dead?  They sure are expensive - since 2001 the Teaching & Learning Federation (TLF) has used “AUD$123 million ….. divided by 6300 curriculum items. That’s close to AUD$20,000 for each single (eg, Flash) TLF curriculum item,” observed Stephen Loosley (Member, Victorian Institute of Teaching) when he opened some excellent discussion [...]

Kim Flintoff drew the attention of readers of the fantastic West Australian eChalk email list to this video - eSN TechWatch: Preparing Kids for 21st-Century Success. Kim observed: Yet another smart person (Daniel Pink) recognises what needs to be done in education – why don’t things change? Interesting that embedded arts is identified as [...]

This public service campaign video was filmed at the CoSN (Consortium for School Networking) annual conference. The wisdom with which educational leaders like Alan November, Greg Whitby, and Stephen Heppell explicate the urgency of giving teachers the tools to connect with 21C learning and their students is poignant in this video. The massive task [...]

This Technology Integration Matrix is a very handy reference point for school administrators, especially those ready to take the plunge and give students the opportunity of 1:1 access the Digital Education Revolution funding offers. It is worthwhile clicking on the links under each indicator to see how the integration works in both shared and 1:1 learning [...]

As @dswaters pointed out at the recent ECAWA unconference I am not the most social creature online these days! I do engage with some discussions on email lists and a little bit more lately on Twitter but in general this year I have not really been joining in the dialogue of the blogosphere as [...]

Technology now dominates every area of our lives and educators need to make sure they are prepared for its inclusion into our schools. This may mean making a break from traditional teaching methods; but there is no denying the inevitability of technology being thrust into curricula around the country. Many teachers may be [...]

Paul Fuller was our special guest in a live Digital Chalkie webcast in this conversation around how one globally aware primary school got their one-to-one parent funded notebook program off the ground please tune-in. Paul explains about the students’ reactions, planning, financing, technical and pedagogical shifts. Below is a podcast of Digital Chalkie webcast #6: How [...]

Great - we finally have computers making their way into the hands of Australian students. But what if they don’t have access to the internet that will really equip then as 21C learners when they get home? (I’ve written more about the Meraki solution on my own blog here.) In this scenario, I have been [...]

Yesterday I gave a presentation to a couple of dozen people using Adobe Connect Pro. I couldn’t see them. I might as well have been blindfolded. Most web conferencing software is set up for one-way lectures. I’m more into conversations. The assumption is that the speaker will lead the audience through a linear set of [...]

When a company sends me an invoice with no return address or way to reply, I consider it invalid. And unprofessional. For example, I just received an invoice from no-reply@ning.com for $24.95. That’s the fee for withholding advertising on the group lukeshosp.ning.com. I’ve tried to close this account but could not figure out how to [...]

Informal Learning begins with these words: “THIS IS A BOOK about knowledge workers, twenty-first-century business, and informal learning. I first heard the term informal Learning from the late Peter Henschel, then director of the Institute for Research on Learning (IRL), who told me: People are learning all the time, in varied settings and often most [...]

Video is to photographs as photographs are to text. Cheap pocket videocams will change the way we look at the world. If you’re introducing a new product at British Telecom, instead of developing and distributing an introductory course, you take a brief video of someone explaining it with your pocket videocam and upload it to [...]

I admit it. I couldn’t live without my daily drugs. Every day I take 5 to 7.5 milligrams of rat poison. Yesterday I had a long talk with a fellow rat poison user. That’s 3-(alpha-acetonylbenzyl)-4-hydroxycoumarin for you chemists out there. (More info here, if you want to learn how it works.) You don’t pop rat [...]

Enough already! Following another wonderful, vacation day, I peak in my Tweetstream and find this: sparkandco The Holly MacDonald Daily is out http://paper.l… – featuring @GuyKawasaki @JaneBozarth @hjarche @jaycross @web20classroom 1d ago via Paper.li mpetersell The Mike Petersell Daily is out http://paper.l… – featuring @jaycross @hjarche @SportsCenter @RapidBI @JaneBozarth 1d ago via Paper.li mrch0mp3rs The [...]

Steve Bordley emailed me this morning to point out that… A new study published in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience has shown that walking will in fact enhance connectivity within brain circuits. Additionally, the study found that walking also improves cognition and combats the decline in brain function normally associated with aging. Walking, in effect, keeps [...]

Ten years ago I was writing several daily blogs: In 2001, these joined together to become the Internet Time Blog, one of the earliest blogs about learning: Five years later, writing my book on Informal Learning, I added a blog of the same name. The Informal Learning blog started somewhat idealistically: “This goes back to [...]

I’ve been using Feedburner, an online service that’s now part of Google, to offer RSS subscriptions to my blogs. Four months ago, the RSS feed associated with the Informal Learning Blog started to go haywire. I went to Feedburner to investigate. I clicked Edit Feed Details and entered my RSS feed. This returns an error; [...]

Increasingly, posts about learning will appear in the Informal Learning Blog. More tentative, experimental, and personal items will show up here on the Internet Time Blog. Insights and pointers on learning, corporate performance, research. Informal Learning Blog Left brain dominant A group of us contribute our best thinking on working smarter. Internet Time Alliance Lots of [...]

Complexity is a defining attribute of society today – in fact, it’s foundational to understanding people, markets, technology, and why “things go wrong”. Unfortunately, school did not equip me to understand complexity or even to recognize it. I learned that right answers exist (in fairness, they do sometimes). I learned that clarity and lack of [...]

As long as the internet (web) continues to grow in prominence, a corresponding increase in transparency will occur. In the future, we will share more information, have access to more information, and companies will begin to build revenue models around our behaviour. Currently, advertising is a fairly dumb/blind activity. What is the impact of a [...]

I’ve heard of SNAPP before – ” software tool that allows users to visualize the network of interactions resulting from discussion forum posts and replies” – but decided to play around with it today. This is a good example of a fairly simple, light-weight tool to analyze social interactions in an LMS like Moodle, Blackboard, [...]

As many theorists of innovation have noted, it’s difficult for mature established fields (and corporations, for that matter) to reinvent themselves. Change often comes from the outside. Once an organization has settled into a revenue stream that provides some security, it’s almost impossible for that organization to adopt approaches that harm or cannibalize that revenue [...]

Email – having survived many declarations of its death – is experiencing a renewal. This week, Google launched priority inbox. Then came the announcement of Greplin (most likely candidate for Google acquisition) – a service for searching across multiple platforms: gmail, twitter, facebook, dropbox, etc. And guess what? Now email has been raised to platform [...]

UPDATE: Just got word from Marc Parry – the article is now accessible here. __ Have you ever had the feeling that you’re making great progress on a topic you’ve been passionate about for over a decade? I had that over the last few weeks when I had several interviews with the Chronicle for an [...]

I received an email recently that highlighted the millenium development goals – eight goals set by UN member states. The goals include reducing extreme poverty, universal primary education, reducing child mortality rates, improving maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS/Malaria, and related goals. TEDxChange will be hosted in New York and will include events in cities around the [...]

Last week, I announced an upcoming conference in Banff on Learning Analytics (call for papers can be found here). We have also set up a Google Group for discussions about learning analytics and the conference. What are Learning Analytics? (LA) Learning analytics is the use of intelligent data, learner-produced data, and analysis models to discover [...]

I’ve posted a few thoughts on AU’s Landing about how I manage information. I specifically use the term information instead of knowledge. Our encounter with information is one of sensemaking and wayfinding. We encounter a continual flow of information – most of it will never become “knowledge”. We file it, we share it, we cite [...]

The explosion of mobile devices has added numerous layers to our interaction with each other and with information, most notably – augmented reality and location-based computing. Location-based services (such as Foursquare and Gowalla) allow individuals to “check-in” to physical locations through a mobile app. Once you’re checked in, members of your social network knows your [...]

This video is going round the web, but very interesting.

The message is that higher incentives lead to poorer performance on even basic cognitive tasks. Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose lead to better performance, once you take the issue of money off the table.

RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us

The main point is to think about how you can provide your team with more autonomy, more time to achieve mastery on specific skills, and provide everyone with a clear purpose.

UPDATE: Check out this long and interesting post from Michael Feldstein Sakai Conference: Kamenetz Keynote http://bit.ly/cNigzC He takes the ideas from a keynote from Anya Kamenetz at the Sakai Conference and compares them to Dan Pink's ideas.  There is a lot of information here, but some interesting things to consider if you are familiar or have time to go through them. 

Here is a great short movie by Dan Roam on the history of visual thinking. It is a great example of how we can improve learning.


SXSW 2010: Dan Roam on Visual Thinking from Teehan+Lax on Vimeo.

I would love to see more trainers put this type of thinking into their presentations. Specifically on ideas that can be abstract.  I wonder if we can convert the iPad into a tool to make these types of presentations. Does anyone know of a specific tool / app for presenting through the iPad?

I was thinking about a comment I heard on Rocketboom from an Intel employee discussing the release of their classmatePC designed for the classroom. His comment was something to the effect that since students have broadband and computers at home, they are set back 20 years when they enter the classroom. (I am paraphrasing). This is an interesting idea on a couple of levels.

At School

From Flickr

The school technology experience often looks like working on a document, creating a presentation, researching a planet, or maybe even blogging if you are lucky.  Most technology at school is limited to controlled weekly or maybe even daily time slots working in locked computing environments on very structured lessons.  All for seemingly good reasons - equal access, meeting learning standards, protection from harmful content. These types of situations are a good start, but they just don't support the kind of deeper learning that happens in a more open online environment.

Compare this to Home.

I think it is certainly true that the majority of our youth now has internet access at home. Many have multiple devices that are connected to broadband access, including the traditional desktop that is typically in the home office area, at least one parent as a laptop from work (if not both), they may have a netbook that maybe a grandparent got them for Christmas, an ipod touch for their birthday, many have iphones, and then many have game consoles like the xBox360, Wii, or Playstation that are connected. (not to mention the PSP and iPad).  Soon, we will be able to add AppleTV and GoogleTV connecting our TVs throughout the house.  So, while a few homes have all these things, most have at least one.


We are beginning to see that students have more open access to the web at home then they do in the school. With this in place, the home learning environment looks a little different then what kids see at school. This open learning platform is more like having a constant feedback loop with repeated opportunities for reading, listening, and watching content and on-going collaboration.

Of course, this more open approach can be in conflict with the more controlled school environment, particularly when access to technology is limited and lessons are focused on specific outcomes and I think some of that tension represents an important value that educators bring to the process.

When our youth are given more freedom to work through a reinforcement loop that happens when you surf the web, they are able to accelerate their own, self-driven learning.

Now I don't want to create a stereotype that somehow our youth are in this constant mode of multi-tasking and can somehow manage all these things simultaneously for hours on end, because that is not really what I am seeing.  What it looks like to me, is that my 11 year old is switching among these various activities, waiting for feedback from a particular activity and filling the down time with content consumption or some other engaging activity.

So, it might be that he is maintaining an on-going chat session with a couple of friends online, while he switches back and forth with the realtime stats feed of an NBA game that is on the TV. When the announcer mentions something that is happening in the sports world, he jumps over and reads an online article about that event. Then after the chat has ended or at least paused he will launch an online game and play for ten minutes or launch a YouTube video to checkout.  If it is funny or compelling in some way he will send the link to a friend.


Each of these activities are in their own way a feedback loop and must be compelling for the young learner to stay engaged or they will simply move on and try something different. If the activity is compelling enough they will engage at a deeper level, reading it completely, making a comment, sharing it with a friend.

The determination of what is compelling is made on the fly based on a variety of factors including the topic, who is involved, and the emotional component of the content. (think baby laughing on YouTube). My son is a frequent online visitor of a guy who makes up parody songs about the NFL and it is really an emotional connection with that content and he always wants to share the with me.  

Provided with enough "free time" learners will begin to build reading and collaboration skills and hopefully at some point start to take the role of creator. If you want to really help today's youth, encourage them to be creators on the web. Post a video, write a song and post it, blog, and even engage in Facebook and Twitter (Note: I won't let me 11 yr old on Facebook and his Twitter stream is private to friends).  These are great skills they will use for the rest of their life.

Some Early Programs

So there may be some interesting things with the way kids use technology at school vs the way the use them at home. I have been fortunate enough to have been involved in two programs that are changing this reality for school kids.

The Globaloria program that has been implemented throughout West Virginia (I was the Program Manager for a year) and promotes this more open exploration of learning and extend computer use.

The second program, is a program that I am involved in is a 1 to 1 computer to student program at a local elementary school that will be entering it's second year this fall. Students each have a netbook computer to use for the entire school day, everyday and get to take the technology home for homework assignments and hopefully to explore additional content.

What do you Think?

I think that next question is, if the above is actually happening at some level, what impact will that have on our youth?  Who will thrive in this new environment? Is a single computer with internet access equal to many devices, or does having a mobile device at an early age give you an advantage?  Maybe you completely disagree with this assessment of what is happening?

The new iPhone was announced today. Of course the hype is impressive. The phone will have Facetime (wifi-based video calling), a 960x640 display, multi-tasking, and HD video editing and playback, all on a new OS (details here).

Of course, it will take time to decide if it is open enough for those who value openness and I do at some level. No announcement on adding cellular carries that I saw or heard.

Over the next few days I will try to consider how the iPhone4 might be used as an educational tool. What type of learning can it enable?

What is your initial reaction to the announcement?

Adobe's new software is designed to build content for the iPad. I think it was a great idea for Adobe to come back with an ipad solution. A great example of bringing something positive to the market amid negative discussions with the HTML5 vs Flash issue.



In addition to bringing something positive to the market, they came with very specific influencers, Wired and Toy Story. I am not sure I am ready to pay $5 an issue, but it does show that Adobe wants to story top-of-mind in the new digital space of mobile computing.

So I have had the idea that I think would be a great service to allow people to tweet when they are being asked to wait on hold on the telephone, or at the doctor or dentist office. Something like #onhold or #waiting and then the company that you are waiting #onhold ATT or #onhold Frontier or #waiting Walmart.  It would be important to really think about how to handle the formatting of the tags and support information. I realize you could just start doing it on twitter and see it would take off, but it might be interesting to build a site designed to aggregate the data and provide the Zeitgeist in a human readable way.    If you could add an estimated time, that would be great as well.

I haven't thought it through, but it seems the service would be valuable to consumers if linked to Yelp or other consumer services and it could provide insight into customer service for many companies.  It might also be more of a mobile app, but I think there wouldn't be strong adoption if people had to download an app.

Is there anything out there already?  I haven't looked.

One positive angle would be to allow people to log something productive or positive they were able to do while waiting.

#waiting dentist 10min brainstormed new twitter service

UPDATE: Bob Coffield twitter stream reveals something along these lines in healthcare...

@iHealthBeat new web-based tool called @MedWaitTime
 to check wait times at hospitals and doctor's office: http://bit.ly/9r56Lo#health20

My daughter and I have had fun creating four layered beats with BeatWave. I free iPad app that allows you to select a series or patterns of tones to make a cool collection beats. The really cool part was when we started experiment with the patterns that make the visual representation of the beat. It did have a feature to email the beat, but I am not sure how it worked once you received the email.

If you want to have some fun find a friend when you might check it out!

The web is starting to bring on new sensors that will change the way that we interact with the internet, data, and the world. By connecting the items of the world to the web, we will be immersed in a (insert really big metaphor like sea or galaxy) of data and information. This will change things once again. To get a grasp on what that looks like and to make a case that we will have to rethink how we build technical infrastructure and design user interfaces, the folks at MAYA Design created this video.


Trillions from MAYAnMAYA on Vimeo.

I really like to the simple approach in the video, showing how big a trillion things are and how they begin to consider where we will probably have to look for our own design inspirations. It is interesting to think about how this will impact science, education, marketing, collaboration, etc.  These changes also once again underscore the need to improve content aggregation tools. We will have to have better ways to handle this data. Finally, for the first time, I think it has made me think about how cloud computing will become a real necessity for leveraging all the data of the future. This is going to be interesting.

Earlier, Google showed their new Google TV solution. Some pundits dismissed it due to the fact that much of this technology exists, but I think that Google has a pretty good feel for timing. I think the timing feels right for integrating television programming with web-browsing. There are so many factors that play into how TV is consumed and how people use the Internet in that same environment. The Google solution may address that many people are trying to find a comfortable way to jump between the internet and TV in a simple way.  In addition the physical considerations, Google has taken a search-centric approach to content. I think that this represents a shift in culture that many won't "get" for some time, but eventually, they will really come to appreciate the simplicity of the Google approach. True, Microsoft Media Center tried to pull this off and was able to do some cool things, but it just seems to be a completely different environment from the web, that it just doesn't always feel right.

Of course for me, I immediately started thinking about the learning implications of GoogleTV.  Can you imagine every student with a tablet at their desk and the teacher controlling the large flat panel TV at the front of the room? Then have the students push their work to the front of the room or the teacher by selecting it.  Seth Godin's Blog post: iPad killer app #2: fixing meetings  talks about making meetings better by suppling every attendee with an tablet with certain functionality, most of these ideas would work in the classroom as well. Then, having GoogleTV integrated in for the instructor would be awesome. The ability to search for rich video content, bookmark it, and pull it just at the right time during the lesson or presentation. Have students respond to the video by answering the 10 questions on their Google Site.

I know, there is a lot of infrastructure required for such a scenario, but it is a lot closer then it was before.  Google continues to work to bring things to consumers to drive technology use. Yes, they want to sell advertising and we have to monitor what our learners are exposed to, but if GoogleTV turns out to serve as a centralized search tool connecting content on television with content on the web, our world probably just got a little more integrated.

If you are not familiar with what Google is proposing, check it out here.

There are nine, but this is my favorite. -Lee

Pay by the word.

Here's the deal: You should have to put $5 into the coffee fund for every single word on the wordiest slide in your deck. 400 words costs $2000. If that were true, would you use fewer words? A lot fewer? I've said this before, but I need to try again: words belong in memos. Powerpoint is for ideas. If you have bullets, please, please, please only use one word in each bullet. Two if you have to. Three never.

-Seth Godin
http://bit.ly/b07syq

iOS is the name of Apple's mobile operating system which runs on the iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad. All iOS devices can be used for recording, and in his latest video podcast, edtech guru Tony Vincent shares some great tips for using the "Voice Memo" app along with iTunes to audio record in the classroom. [...]

Today in my "Computers in the Classroom" course at the University of North Texas, we reviewed the PI4BL chapter "Redefining the Beginner." One of the things I learned last semester, teaching "Technology 4 Teachers" at the University of Central Oklahoma, was NOT to assume things about students' background knowledge and entering computer literacy skills. This [...]

This evening I'm in Denton, Texas, and my son is back in Edmond, Oklahoma. He needed some help with his advanced debate class assignment, in which he's researching the definition of "Objectivism" and writing some attacks as well as defenses for it. Thankfully, as a 7th grader he knows how to use both Google Documents [...]

This summer for the second time, I had an opportunity to present and learn with other educators gathered for the week long "Oklahoma Multimedia Teachers" workshop at the Gaylord School of Journalism on the campus of OU in Norman. Tammy Parks, a broadcast journalism teacher in Howe, Oklahoma, has got me involved in this project. [...]

This Thursday I'll be sharing a full day workshop for faculty at Southeastern Oklahoma State University on "iPads in Education." The following is a Google Doc I've created with links to about 30 different applications we'll discuss and explore. If you're viewing this page on an iOS device and cannot view the embedded version below, [...]

We have several new babies in our extended family, and today I learned about a new app my cousins are using to track the activities and development of their first child. http://www.baby-connect.com/ Baby Connect is a web app and an iOS app. Log times your baby eats, mom nurses and pumps, diaper changes, hours of [...]

eBooks are proliferating, and the trend toward reading more content as bits instead of atoms (in digital rather than paper-based forms) is going to keep gathering momentum in the months ahead. In July 2010, NPR reported Amazon.com sold more eBooks than paper-based books in the first half of the year. This is a telling statistic. [...]

Luis Suarez of IBM provides an optimistic view of the future of email in yesterday's Mashable article, "A World Without E-mail: One Man’s Vision of a Social Workplace:" http://mashable.com/2010/09/03/world-without-email/ "With technology changing rapidly, it’s worthwhile to wonder if ten years down the line, e-mail may still be as prominent in our lives as it is [...]

My sister and brother in law use Pocket Informant HD for their Google calendars and love it. Like MobileMe for Google Calendar, but less expensive. Supports full editing as well as viewing of shared Google calendars. $6.99. http://www.pocketinformant.com/products_info.php?p_id=pocketinformant_ipad Sent from my iPad Posted via email from wesley fryer's posterous

Jus learned about the free iPad app "Discover" by Cooliris. Similar to Flipboard in its interface - but all content from Wikipedia. H/T to my Sis! http://www.cooliris.com/ipad/discover Sent from my iPad Posted via email from wesley fryer's posterous

While our local newspaper can do no better than to recycle tired old talking points, it is refreshing to be able to find local blogs from the New Brunswick educational community talking about, and working with, 21st century educational practices. As one writer cites from Dave Warlick: "When teachers are released from district managed portals, and allowed to shape their own personal learning networks, when they are granted a voice and ear to a global conversation about education, when students begin to take a more active role in affecting the 'what' and 'how' of their own learning, then education changes, and the barriers between the 'classroom' and 'world' start to disappear." Various Authors, Weblog, September 9, 2010 [Link] [Comment]

Very nice discussion of the concept of 'affordances'. "Affordances can be thought of as possibilities for action. Affordances are detected by a goal-driven agent as they move about in an 'information field' that results from the working of their senses in concert with their body movements." Matangdilis contrasts affordances - which are more like facts of nature - with cultural conventions (though obviously one is related to the other, as we see easily with the QWERTY convention for typewriters). And he draws some interesting conclusions about perceptual learning. "The idea here is that knowledge does not only exist in the world but also in the environment. And that in order to learn one does not need to be separated from the environment; one does not need to withdraw inside the mind to learn. That separation from the environment would lead to loss of knowledge. The unity and inseparability of man and environment is important." Good stuff. matangdilis, Open Educational Tools, September 8, 2010 [Link] [Comment]

Look like a good thing: "Higher Ed Live is a brand new LIVE weekly web show focused on the emerging role of social media and digital media marketing in higher education. Hosted by [Seth Odell], the show will broadcast live every Sunday at 7 p.m. EST." Via Kyle James.
Seth Odell, As Media Changes, September 8, 2010 [Link] [Comment]

Another open online course in the connectivist mold: "Many are predicting that higher education, like dot-coms and housing before it, is the next "bubble" ready to burst, and that technology will be at the forefront of college cost control. Using Anya Kamenetz's DIY U as a starting point, we'll consider what these trends might mean in an open seminar." Definitely worth a look. "I imagine this as more of a discussion of issues than an exercise in learning a particular something, so it seems to lend itself better to the seminar label. We'll scaffold our discussions around DIY U by Anya Kamenetz, but it is merely a point de départ. For those who don't have the book or don't wish to read it, there will be other suggested resources on each topic." It started September 7 so you're not too late, really. Jason Green, Pulaski Technical College , September 8, 2010 [Link] [Comment]

Some excellent expertise and guidance from Heli on Connectivism on the eve of out PLENK 2010 course. She summarizes and draws some conclusions from a dissertation by Minna Lakkala (also recommended, especially the first 40 pages). It's a bit much to summarize in a paragraph, but one of the conclusions, "educational settings should include elements that explicitly advance students' metalevel awareness and understanding of inquiry strategies," is relevant.

"In particular," Heli summarizes, "those elements in students' activities should be structured and directed, which are central to the aim of Progressive Inquiry, but which the students do not recognize or demonstrate spontaneously without explicit modelling or promotion, and which are usually not taken into account in existing pedagogical methods or educational conventions. Such elements are, among others:
- productive co-construction activities;
- sustained engagement in improving produced ideas and explanations;
- critical reflection of the adopted inquiry practices, and
- sophisticated use of modern technology for knowledge work."

I have my criticisms, but these should not detract from the excellent reading to be found in both the dissertation and the blog post describing it. In particular, I find the notion of enquiry pictured above (as much as I like Hintikka) to be too narrow. This results in questions that (in my view) presuppose their own conclusions. For example, when Lakkala poses the question (p. 69) "what kind of on-line intervention from tutors would be functional to elicit more in-depth inquiry than students are able to reach without procedural guidance" we already know she believes what she will conclude, that "on-line intervention from tutors would be functional to elicit more in-depth inquiry."


Heli Nurmi, Heli on Connectivism, September 8, 2010 [Link] [Comment]

I know tech breaks down, and most frequently breaks down when you're trying something new in front of an audience. But this is exactly why I try new things in front of an audience. I know that people live almost in fear of their tech breaking down - hence this "survival guide" helping teachers cope with the inevitable problems. But while the suggestions here are very useful - I've used almost all of them myself - the most important tip is missing: solve your problem openly. While you're working on the problem, describe what you're doing, how you planned for the problem, and how you're addressing it. Let students know your thinking process. Let them see you think! I've done this in front of full auditoriums - and had people come to me after to say that this was the most interesting part of the talk. Shelly Blake-Plock, Teach Paperless, September 8, 2010 [Link] [Comment]

The Knowledge Tree: an e-journal of learning innovation is calling for contributions for the next edition (Edition 21), due for publication on 12 October 2010. The Australian Flexible Learning Framework (Framework) is interested in hearing from vocational education and training (VET) providers, businesses, trainers and practitioners who would like to publish peer-reviewed articles (short or lead), [...]

Kermit the Frog might have sung that it wasn’t easy being green, but we at The Knowledge Tree wanted to find out if he was wrong! But, of course, the ‘e’ in our ‘easy’ stands for e-learning. In what way can it help make it easy for Australia to be green? Edition 20 explores various ways [...]

The Australian Flexible Learning Framework (Framework) is now calling for contributions relating to current research in learning innovation for Edition 20 which is due for publication on 20 July, 2010.  To submit an article or have an idea for a theme or item please contact the editorial team via email:  e-events@flexiblelearning.net.au. Edition 20 focuses on: E-learning [...]

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Likewise, you can lead students to computers, but you can’t offer them engaging courses – unless VET practitioners have developed and honed the skill sets required to effectively implement e-learning. In this edition of The Knowledge Tree we expose the vital skill sets [...]

As anyone who has a teenager will attest, putting a first time learner in the driver’s seat of a car is a scary proposition.  Edition 18 of The Knowledge Tree looks at how web 2.0 technologies, particularly e-portfolios and point of view (POV) technologies, are allowing learners to ‘take the wheel’ in the learning process. Highlights: Lead [...]

The Australian Flexible Learning Framework (Framework) is now calling for contributions relating to current research in learning innovation for Edition 19 of The Knowledge Tree: an E-journal of Learning Innovation. This edition is due for publication on 13 October, 2009.  To submit an article or to have an idea for an item, please contact the [...]

Dear Knowledge Tree readers We are planning two editions of The Knowledge Tree in 2009. Edition 18 is likely to be published in July and Edition 19 in October. The theme for Edition 18 is likely to be about e-assessment, RPL and e-portfolios. The theme for Edition 19 is likely to focus on case studies for mainstreaming [...]

Dear Knowledge Tree readers Registrations and now OPEN for a free online mini-conference on some of the latest e-learning developments and innovations from around the Australian VET sector. You can register and find out more at - http://flexiblelearning.net.au/networksevents And at the e-events website - http://flexiblelearning.net.au/e-events Knowledge Tree editorial team

Edition 17 of The Knowledge Tree focuses on youth and e-learning: due for release on Monday 27 October 2008! Highlights Lead article: The lead writer is Bill Wade of Charles Darwin University, NT who writes about ‘Everything I Need to Learn: Engaging Youth in Online Learning’. Article: A case study on a successful partnership between Hunter Institute [...]

This posting is designed to alert you to: • Where you can find all the archives of ‘live conversations’ with lead writers • A correction and change to RSS feed For all recordings of live conversations go to http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2007/archive-of-live-conversations/ The latest recorded live conversation is with Barb McPherson on her ‘Facing the Future’ article which explores the implications of [...]