Consciousness of knowledge

A few recent events and exchanges have got me thinking about levels of consciousness associated with knowledge (I've probably misused semantics in some places, so forgive me):

Knowing that you know - conscious knowledge
When you have gone through a specific learning experience to gain knowledge, you know you have that knowledge. I know that the orders of operation associated with algebra can be summarised in the acronym BODMAS (or any of several variations on that theme). I remember learning it. I remember arguing with my son's Year 5 maths teacher when she said "We don't use that system, here" - as if it were an optional extra. I have taught it countless times when reaching the point of formulas in spreadsheet training. I use it myself whenever I create a formula in a spreadsheet package. I know BODMAS. I know that I know it, I know why I know it, and I know when to use it.

Not knowing that you know - unconscious knowledge
I have never had one of those real eye-opening moments like Geena Davis in Long Kiss Goodnight when she discovers to her horror that she knows how to assemble a sniper rifle. But on a smaller scale, there are moments when we put our knowledge into practise, surprising ourselves that we possessed the knowledge in the first place. A friend's Dalmatian bitch recently produced 8 puppies. They were her first litter, yet she ate their faeces (I know, I know) as she would in the wild to hide their existence from predators. Although we are no longer so reliant on our instincts, we have reserves of knowledge we don't even know about until they are needed.

Knowing that you don't know - conscious ignorance, part 1 - the foundation for learning
It is when you know that you don't know that you ask questions - and hopefully pay attention to the answers. Unless of course, you "don't know, don't care" - which is another matter again. I know that I don't know enough about html. I am having vocabulary-expanding trouble trying to use the new Blogger feature to upgrade my blog template while retaining my hard-won widgets. I am pestering everyone who might be able to help with a myriad questions, but have so far made precious little progress! I know that I am still learning about connectivism, so I ask questions of people like George and Stephen and will my brain to understand their responses. I read the exchange on the Connectivism Conference Moodle and form views on the messages posted there, filtering the new information through what (I think) the experts are saying.

Don't know, don't care - conscious ignorance, part 2 - the nursery of bigotry and prejudice
Someone once told me she had won a trip to South Africa. Congratulating her, I asked her where she was going, so that I could recommend a few sights to take in. "Uganda," she replied. When I told her that Uganda was not only not in South Africa, it was a long distance away, she shrugged and said airily, "It's all Africa isn't it?" Don't know, don't care. My husband calls this "I've made up my mind, don't confuse me with facts!"

Don't know that you don't know - unconscious ignorance
I'm probably as guilty of this as anyone I might point a finger at. I don't know what I don't know. Not realising what great holes there are in my knowledge, I might make confident, categorical statements about situations/events/whatever that are patently untrue. I notice this particularly in my teenage sons - they are in that fortunate stage of their lives when they still know everything ;-) When someone points out the flaw in my statement, or draws my attention to some information that contradicts what I think, I have a choice: either I can move into knowing that I don't know, or I can go to don't know, don't care.

I'm sure there are other categories, too, and it's useful to know where your user audience is when you're designing a learning solution, since this will impact the solution on many levels.

How do I get my blog to Explode?

Thanks to Stephen Downes, I found Explode. I thought it looked like an interesting way to encounter like-minded people. So I duly created my profile, and I've made a few friends - some of whom have befriended me in return. Since then I've noticed that some people are Exploding onto their blogs - that there is either a widget or a container on the blog linking to Explode. The good folks behind Explode (and Elgg) have created the means to do this.

If you have "MySpace, Livejournal, Wordpress.com, Vox, or similar" you go for one option. If you own your own blog, use Movable Type, Wordpress, an account on an Elgg system, or run your own custom site, you go for the other. So I have a Blogger blog - which kind is that? I've tried both options, adding the code to the sidebar of my template, but nothing changes.

Aargh! The frustrations of tech-ignorance!

W H Auden

Wednesday was WH Auden's birthday. I know this because it says so on the poetry calendar my husband gave me for Christmas. I have been out of the office since Monday, so I only turned that page over today. Much of my poetry of choice is American in origin (Frost, Auden, Dickinson, Whitman, Pound and my all time favourites cummings and Jeffers), and I would reproduce the Auden poem used on the calendar, only it would seem to be against copyright, so instead I will link to it on someone else's site, and let them worry about copright!

The little shpiel commemorating the day relates the following story:

Dorothy Day was the founder of the Catholic Worker Movement in New York and did much to soldier against poverty with slim resources. Unfortunately, her compassion for others didn't win any sympathy from the government. She was once fined $250 because one of her hostels was "not up to code." Leaving the courthouse disheartened - for she had no ready means to cover the fine - she passed a sorry group of men looking for handouts. One man, as scruffy as the rest, emerged from amid the group and pressed a piece of paper into her hand. Explaining that he heard what had happened, he said, "I want to help out a little. Here's two-fifty." Day beamed as she thanked him, much cheered by this small act of selflessness. It wasn't until she was on the subway home that she looked at the check. It was a check for two hundred and fifty dollars, not two dollars and fifty cents - and it was signed by WH Auden. The poet once quipped, "We are here on earth to good for others. What the others are here for, I don't know."

I have related this today for no other reason than that it touched a chord with me. I didn't need a reason to like Auden's poetry, but this story certainly did the man no harm in my eyes.

Obscure musings: cats and learning

So here I am, sitting at my dining room table (I'm working from home today), grinding my teeth in frustration. "Why?" I hear you ask (well, not really, but I'm going to tell you anyway!)

I have two cats: Molly and Daisy. They are litter sisters who have never been apart one day in their lives. Molly is the athlete, Daisy is the poser. Molly is independent and a take control girl. Daisy is a helpless whinger.

Since we are fresh air addicts, even in the depths of winter, the fanlights in the upper storey are open. Molly uses these to get in and out of the house, and she spends a great deal of time outdoors in any weather. Daisy is convinced that "outdoors" is a place that appears when the weather is good and the downstairs windows are open.

Molly negotiates her way behind the heavy wooden louvre blind in our bedroom, hauls herself up and through the fanlight, makes her way along the slatted wooden platform thing (said she articulately. I wish my camera battery wasn't flat!), down onto the garage, the shed, the fence and then to the ground. She comes back the same way. If the downstairs windows are open, even better. Out through the lounge windows and back the same way. Great. She figured all of that out all by herself.

Then there's Daisy. She has not ever ventured behind the wooden blind - I'm not even sure she is aware that the upstairs windows exist. Even if she figured that out, there is little chance that she would be able to follow her sister's example. Daisy doesn't "do" jumping or clambering - so unladylike, you understand. When the weather is fine (like today) and the downstairs windows are open, she heaves her (somewhat overweight) body up and out, and that's when the trouble starts. Within moments, she is yelling on the top of her voice, informing me (and the whole neighbourhood) that there is no way back into the house. That she's lost. Abandoned. Forlorn. Destitute. Alone. So I get up and open the front door for her. Haranguing me roundly, she comes back indoors, only to head straight back to the window and out again. I have tried ignoring her. I have tried sticking my head through the window and calling her, so that she can see how to get back in. I have tried making her favourite sound with the food container to entice her to find a way in. No dice. Occasionally, instead of yowling, she will "knock" on the front door. This involves hooking and releasing the rubber insulation, which genuinely makes a knocking sound... and totally destroys the rubber.

They make me think of the two extremes of learners. One gets on with it, figures it out for herself and makes independent progress. The other whines and whinges until someone does it for them out of pity or the quest for a moment's peace.

She's out there, right now, yelling her head off again. Last time I let her in (about 2 minutes ago), I groaned, "Why can't you learn how to let yourself in, you stupid moggy?" And then I thought about it. She has. Her method works just as well as her sister's. Better maybe.

There's a lesson in there somewhere, but I'm trying hard not to learn it!

Visiting? About this blog...

From time to time, posts appear that encourage us (bloggers, that is) to provide newcomers with an introduction to our blogs. I have tended not to do this, because my view was that the handful of readers already knew their way around.

Then recently, I received a message from someone via via via, to the effect that they were unsure how to go about subscribing to my blog. So I decided to rethink things.

First off, I have added a widget just below the blog title for easy subscription via a selection of aggregators. Since I have a Bloglines account, I have a "Sub with Bloglines" button on my browser toolbar, and this is the way I subscribe to any blog that sustains my interest. I recognise that not everyone (a) uses Bloglines as their aggregator and (b) knows how to do this! Apologies for a lack of inclusiveness in my approach.

I tend to be a bit of an end user blogger. I don't know how to add a widget to my blog that tells you how many readers I have had, nor would I know where to start to customise my template. I had to have help from Mark Berthelemy in adding that widget, for example. Mark is a total whizzkid, who fortunately belongs to the same team as I do for his day job. I wouldn't ever have believed that I would meet anyone more passionate about learning than me... and then I met Mark!

Another invaluable source of help has been Vicki Davis, who occasionally posts on "how to" do this, that or the other thing associated with blogging. I think that Vicki is slightly newer to blogging than I am (I started on 13 July 2005), but she has taken the bull by the horns and become a blogger of note in a very short space of time. She is also a very unselfish person and a born teacher who is willing to share what she knows with anyone who's interested.

My blog posts tend to centre around issues associated with learning: learning in general, my own learning experience and my reflections on the experiences of others (often my two sons). My field is the corporate environment, so my focus is on the workplace learner. This is my passion - post-compulsory learning under circumstance which are usually a long way from conducive.

Obviously there is some overlap with the fields of formal education, and my own current journey through a master's degree, coupled with my sons' adventures in a high school system that is alien to me (since I was educated in a different country), mean that I have an interest in this sector as well.

Since we are human and not very easily compartmentalised, I don't stick purely to my own fields of endeavour, but have been known to post about unrelated matters which have touched my life in some way.

Since blogging is in large part a conversation, I am a fairly prolific commenter, and you are likely to come across my name in the comments of many of the blogs listed in my Bloglines. I keep track of these conversation using CoComment, which has been proving increasingly unreliable of late - several conversations going completely unrecorded. I also welcome comments on my own posts, although I recognise that I seldom produce content that is of sufficiently stirring significance to attract a lot of traffic. This doesn't lose me any sleep. Like many other bloggers, my posts are a way of thinking out loud, of getting things of my chest, of committing my thoughts to a space where I can come back to them. If a post serves all these purposes and still strikes a chord for a reader, then that is a double bonus!

If you are new to this blog, I hope that this has been of help to you in some way.

Calling all learning designers: what do you do?

Here is a thought-provoking post from Patrick Dunn of Networked Learning Design about our mysterious job! I recognise myself and my colleagues in some sections, find myself rejecting parts, congratulating myself occasionally and emphatically saying "I wish!" now and again. How about you?

The flat world... NOT!

Thanks to George Siemens for this link (via his newsletter) - as he says:

"While "the world is flat" is a wonderful ideal, it's not reality. It's not reality globally...and it's not reality within Canada (or US, Europe, Middle East, Africa, or where ever). Consider this animation of global economic activity (via Creativity Exchange)"

'Swhat I've been saying all along. Look at all those spikes! And just take a look at my home continent (Africa) and play spot-the-spike for a moment. It breaks my heart!

Introducing the new technology

Thanks to Ewan McIntosh for the pointer to this funny-but-true look at coming to grips with new technologies (via YouTube). Some of us have been in the position of both the helper and the helpee before, and this scenario will ring a few bells!

Where is your mind?

During the recent Connectivism Conference, Bill Kerr posed the following question:

“What is the mind, where is it and how does it work?”

This question formed part of his challenge to connectivism as a learning theory. However, it struck a chord with me last night when my husband read me a report called The Power of Hope in Time magazine of 12 February.

The report is largely based on an anecdote from the author, Scott Haig, MD. He was treating a patient with terminal lung cancer that had metasticised. The patient's brain tissue had been completely replaced by brain tumours, and he had entered the final moments of his life. He had been unconscious and completely incapacitated for some time. Then, suddenly, in the last moments of his life, this man regained consciousness and made very lucid farewells to his family.

As Dr Haig says:

"it wasn't David's brain that woke him up to say goodbye that Friday. His brain had already been destroyed. Tumor metastases don't simply occupy space and press on things, leaving a whole brain. The metastases actually replace tissue. Where that gray stuff grows, the brain is just not there. What woke my patient that Friday was simply his mind, forcing its way through a broken brain"

All our advanced, sophisticated understanding of the brain has still left us a long way short of finding, let alone understanding the mind. If a man with effectively no brain still has a mind, still has a will, where does that leave us? Will our on-going study of the physical brain really tell us what we need to know about that which makes us essentially who we are?

There are so many sciences associated with the brain. Haig summarises:

"Neuroanatomy is largely concerned with which spots in the brain do what; which chemicals have which effects at those spots is neurophysiology. Plan on feeding those chemicals to a real person's brain, and you're doing neuropharmacology. Although they are concerned with myriad, complex, amazing things, none of these disciplines seem to find the mind. Somehow it's "smaller" than the tracts, ganglia and nuclei of the brain's gross anatomy--but "bigger" than the cells and molecules of the brain's physiology. We really should have bumped into it on the way down. Yet we have not. Like our own image in still water, however sharp, when we reach to grasp it, it just dissolves."

Haig is not the first doctor to be amazed at the power of the mind over the brain. Extensive research identifies that a specific part of the brain deals with such-and-such a skill, then along comes a girl with half a brain or a young man with no brain to speak of ("Is Your Brain Really Necessary," Science Dec. 12, 1980, p. 1232.) and defies all that we think we know. People constantly learn new skills and/or rehabilitate from the loss of physical and neurological functions - the mind forcing the brain into new pathways by dint of will. As Haig says elsewhere in the article, "a mind or will, clearly separate, hovers under the machinery, forcing it toward a goal."

I know it sounds cheesy, but Haig's article made my heart sing - we truly are wonderfully made, and we are a long way from unravelling the mysteries of how it all works! I will quote his final paragrph in its entirety to end this post:

"But many think the mind is only in there--existing somehow in the physical relationship of the brain's physical elements. The physical, say these materialists, is all there is. I fix bones with hardware. As physical as this might be, I cannot be a materialist. I cannot ignore the internal evidence of my own mind. It would be hypocritical. And worse, it would be cowardly to ignore those occasional appearances of the spirits of others--of minds uncloaked, in naked virtue, like David's goodbye."

Mark Berthelemy on Will Richardson on "unlearning"

Mark usually uses his blog to point at a resource/asset/post and say: this is interesting, this is new, this is something to watch. He doesn't often share his world view at any length. This post, however, is an exception. He has unpacked Will's post on the steep "unlearning curve" and added his own perspective on some of the issue raised.

In a bizarre reversal of roles, today it is my turn to point at a post and say: this is interesting, this is something to watch. It will be interesting to follow any further exchange of views that grows out of this.

February's big question

The big question for February is "What questions should we be asking". Of course the responses to this will vary widely depending on each individual's field of interest and endeavour. As usual, I will make no pretence at having an objective, global view, but will seek only to speak from my own persepctive.

As a learning designer, I find that the people who requisition learning are often out of touch with the ultimate user audience: namely the learner. In fact, on a current project, I had to explain to one of the client reps what a learner was. This is the person I care most about. I wish the only question ever needed on a learning solutions project was: What will work best for the learner? In the absence of this idyll, I would like to ask:

• How do we bridge the divide between he-who-signs-the-cheques and he-who-will-use-the-resource?
  

How do we overcome the fact that he-who-signs-the-cheques (hwstc) often couldn't care a fig for all this newfangled learning theory stuff: just build me something that I am familiar with, but make sure that it is 100% effective (what do you mean the two things are mutually exclusive?).

I'm sure I'm going to kick myself as I later think of a far more relevant question, but this is where my head is at today.

Elluminate rocks!

I've been attending the Online Connectivism Conference. This has been the first time that I have encountered Elluminate and I'm smitten. The real time presentations (audio plus slides), the concurrent chat, the option for an open mike, the opportunity to occupy on a synchronous basis the same virtual space as people I have only encountered asynchrnously before. It's all too cool for words.

Tagged: how do I blog?

I've been tagged by Vicki Davis who wants to know how I blog. Vicki herself has published a very insightful and articulate post on the matter. She is a woman with her ducks very much in a row. Mine (ducks, that is) are somewhat less disciplined. So how do I blog?

1. First thing every morning, I check my emails. Next thing, I catch up on my bloglines. Next, I check my CoComment. In one of those places, I am likely to come across something that sets off sparks in my brain. If they are small sparks, I will answer the email or comment on the blog post. If there is a major electrical short, I will write a post of my own. My thoughts often take shape as I write. These posts may be a bit rambling, and are likely to include a soapboax moment.
   
2. Life is full of learning experiences, and I often think in allegories. If something has happened that has made a strong impression on me, or taught me a valuable life lesson. I will record the experience and what I learnt from it. In these cases, I tend to record the story chronologically and let it unfold for the reader as it did for me.
3. If I have attended a lecture, a seminar, a conference. I will record my reflections on the event. Drawing out the highlights and lowlights. This style of posting is more common in my Ardent Student blog, where I am journalling my way through my MA course.
4. My husband and two sons are all the family I have in the UK. Everyone else is ranged from Wellington, New Zealand in the east to Portland, Oregon in the west and Stockholm in the north, to Perth in the south. These people are not interested in my musings about the various aspects of my job, or what I think about learning, thinking, knowledge, etc. They care about me. About my boys. About my husband. They want to know that we're happy and healthy, and they want to share in our lives as much as the enormous distances allow. For these people, I have a family blog, where I record humorous anecdotes, achievements, events, milestones, news updates. Inconsequentialities to the rest of the world, but life blood to us and of vital interest to grannies and aunties who haven't seen us for years. These are usually related in such a way as to have maximum impact - building up to the punchline, or emphasising the ridiculous. Inform and entertain.
5. Like Vicki, I seek to be honest in my blog. To be me. I have no patience with or stomach for subterfuge. Some people are quite critical of blogs that draw heavily on personal experience. I guess that's why they don't read mine. I can only provide my own perspective with any accuracy, which is what I do. That perspective may change tomorrow, but what you read in my blog today is a picture of me as I am today.
   

Tags:

• Vicki
• Davis
• bloglines
• cocomment

Where does real end and virtual begin?

This is very much a thinking-out-loud post, and I welcome any thoughts, rebuttals and contributions you might have!

A colleague and I were having this conversation yesterday on the train after Learning Technologies 2007. The conversation was sparked off when my colleague asked if I had ever ventured into the world of Second Life (I hadn't). I mentioned that fact that Sweden was opening an SL embassy. I also touched on some of the other matters I covered in my post on that topic.

I discovered that this is a point that has been exercising him for some time, too. If you can buy properties in SL on eBay, are they virtual? If a thing has sufficient value to a person to warrant them spending hard currency on it, doesn't that make it "real"? And from there, a natural segue to money itself. Even hard currency isn't real. Notes are in fact promisory notes - they aren't money, at all. They're a phyiscal manifestation of a virtual commodity. As I understand it, there is even an exchange rate between SL money (I really must find out what it's called!) and $ or £ or € or whatever. If this is the case, does that not lend weight to the argument that realness and virtuality are no more true of one than the other?

Then we moved on to the things we pay hard currency for. For example, you pay to go to the movies, to a rock concert, to the theatre, to ride a scrambler, drive a tank, ride a roller coaster, adopt a monkey in the zoo, to stay overnight in a 5 star hotel. What are you actually getting for your money? You don't actually own anything afterwards that you didn't own before, and you're broker in fiscal terms. So what is it? An experience? Entertainment? Well, is this real or virtual? How is it any more real than the experience you have online? Than the plot of land you buy in SL? Than the house/family you create in the Sims? Than interacting with your tamagotchi? And on that point, since a tamagotchi is a physical object that you must keep with you, that you must interact with by means of direct touch to meet its many and varied needs, that has a lifespan, how is that a "virtual" pet? Electronic, yes. Virtual, no.

And simulations have been used as valid learning environments for ages. Especially when real world mistakes could lead to loss of assets, money and lives. So is that learning "virtual" or "real"? I would have to say that the learning was real, even if the environment was virtual. But hang on a minute! How virtual is the environment? The learner pilot (for argument's sake) is really a learner pilot. The cockpit is really a cockpit, even though it isn't attached to an aeroplane. The controls really are controls and the pilot will use them exactly as he/she would if there were a plane attached to the cockpit several thousand metres above the earth. The scenario is virtual. True, but the pilot must respond to them exactly as if it were real or his flying career will end before it has gotten off the ground.

Ooh, it's a proper can of worms this! Once you get the lid off, there's no way of knowing where those little blighters might end up!

Tags:

• Virtual
• Real
• Simulations
• Second
• Life
• eBay

Reflections on Learning Technologies 2007

Yesterday I spent the day at the Learing Technologies 2007 exhibition. I would have loved to attend the conference, but at close to £900, my line manager was unconvinced of the ROI to the team (to be honest, at that price, I wasn't so sure myself!), and I certainly didn't have the readies to sponsor myself. So if you're looking for info about that aspect of the event, I apologise.

The exhibition aspect was interesting, with all the usual suspects present and correct.

I have to devote a brief moment to the take-aways and freebies that were on offer, since these always fascinate me. Some people seem to go to conferences and come away with carrier bags of souvenirs. I, on the other hand, usually come away empty-handed. Perhaps I don't the right "look". One exhibitor was dishing out cameras, another was handing out radios (astonishingly, I was given two of these - neither of which works). There was the usual supply of chocolate and pens of varying qualities. One stand had sticks of rock with their company logo in them - ingenious, I thought. One had large, brightly coloured fabric flowers, but these weren't strictly free - one had to sign up for their IT courses to qualify.

Inherent in the exhibition format is the open seminar. These run for half an hour with a 15 minute break between them. I had highlighted a selection of these that I wanted to attend. As is increasingly the case, I was disappointed by most of the presentations. The speakers were usually suffciently engaging, with slick visual aids, but they mostly didn't tell me anything new. I know for a fact that I'm not at the leading edge of knowledge and understanding about learning, so it bothers me that providers seem to be lagging behind even me.

One speaker, whose product impressed me more than most, did himself no favours in my eyes by stating early on (and reiterating at regular intervals) that learning was the process of getting information into your head. The implication being that, unless you had committed a piece of information to memory, you hadn't learnt it. I am very worried about the integrity of a product developed by people who miss the point of the nature of learning in the early 21st century.

I was fortunate to be able to attend the "great balloon debate". The premise was that there were 9 people in a hot air balloon on their way to the mythical kingdom of Elernia. Sadly, I can't name all 9 from memory, but I have a handy list: analyst; learning designer; change management expert; hardware specialist; software specialist; evaluation specialist graphic/interface designer; marketing consultant; project manager. The balloon is sinking fast and three people must be thrown overboard to save the rest. Each person got three minutes to explain to the audience (inlcuding the king and queen of Elernia) why they deserved to keep their place, and the audience voted. The first people to go were: hardware specialist; evaluation expert; graphic/interface designer.

Alas, the balloon continued to sink. Each person got a further two minutes. The next three out were: analyst; change management expert; marketing consultant, leaving the learning designer; software specialist and project manager. Of these, the learning designer scored the highest. Clive Shepherd suspected (as did I, to be honest) that the room was well stocked with learning designers who had voted nepotistically. However, a show of hands revealed just two or three of us.

Immediately after that came the final open seminar of the day which, contrary to expectations, was pretty packed. The subject was m-learning and it proved to the most interesting session of the day. The presenting company, LINE Communications talked us through a case study of a recent project of theirs: they had created an m-learning solution for a driving academy catering largely to young adults. I was pretty impressed to learn that, even before this, the driving academy had equipment to record a learner driver's performance during the lesson and upload it to the LMS back at base. If I tried to describe all the bits and bobs of the solution, I would do it an injustice, so, if you are interested, I suggest a visit to this page on their website. They get my vote for best solution. Usually, when I am getting stressed about deadlines etc., project managers will try to restore perspective by pointing out that this learning: no-one is going to lose their job or their life if we miss a deadline. However, in teaching people to drive safely, in identifying the hot issues for young drivers and addressing them head on (urk - uncomfortable phrase), if it is effective, this learning is in fact going to save lives. What a thing to be able to put on your resume!

My other (purely subjective) impressions are that:

Adobe probably had the highest attendance figures to the demos that they did at their stand on a rolling basis - and people seemed pretty impressed with their offering.
Atlantic Link is the company I would most like to own, being small, passionate, fleet of foot and accommodating of client needs.
Happy Computers Ltd wins the award for sheer gung-ho out there-ness (they were the distributors of the flowers I mentioned). They seem to be the kind of IT trainers that I aimed to be myself, and their stand was a happy, chaotic contrast to all the sleek, muted conformity around them.
Saffron Interactive takes the award for the most original attention grabbing methods with their barman-and-waitress mimes.
The best freebies must be the camera, but I can't give the company a plug, since I don't know who they were.

Tags:

• Learning
• Technologies
• 2007
• Clive
• Shepherd
• LINE
• Communications
• Adobe
• Atlantic
• Link
• Happy
• Computers
• Ltd
• Saffron
• Interactive

Defining learning design

I have often felt that defining a learning designer's role is like trying to nail jelly to a wall. Especially when I am trying to explain to an "outsider" what it is that I do. However, I think I might have just found a new favourite blogger in the shape of Patrick Dunn of Networked Learning Design, who goes a long way towards giving the role some shape. I am just disappointed that I couldn't find an RSS feed to the blog so that I could subscribe (happy to be proved wrong, by the way).

Thanks to Mark Berthelemy who emailed me the link to this post about the learning designer as an architect. The fact that the link came from Mark is no coincidence: we work together on the same team: he as a solutions architect, while I am a learning designer. The boundary between his role and mine has never really been clear. There are things that I think I should so and things I will need Mark to do. These are unlikely to mirror exactly the things he thinks he should do and the things he needs me to do. I confess I am probably the more precious of the two when there is overlap.

However, I have a tendency to approach each project with a sense of panic that I have no idea how to do this. In my more objective moments, I see this as a good thing. Each new project is a whole voyage of discovery. A new adventure with a new destination. What are the learner's needs? What do we want the learner's experience to be? What tools are there out there that will help us achieve that? Which of those tools will work within the client company's constraints? How are we going to engage the learner? And a host of other questions. I have no interest in duplicating the last project for the new client. As Patrick Dunn suggests, we can use patterns and prompts to get the creative juices flowing, but who wants to get stuck in a mechanistic re-use rut? Bleagh!

Kathy Sierra: Randomness and Serendipity

There is a disadvantage to Kathy's enormously popular blog, Creating Passionate Users, and that is that the comments come in so thick and fast, there isn't really the opportunity for a genuine exchange of ideas. Blogs with readers in the hundreds still generate conversation in response to their posts. Blogs with readers in their thousands, markedly less so. When yours is comment number 32, you know that there is scant chance that the blog owner will read it, much less engage with it (Kathy is more diligent than most at this), but the chances of other readers reading and engaging with your comment are even more remote. Hence any comment you make is likely to become a unidirectional salvo.

As a consequence, while Kathy's posts very often strike a chord with me, I seldom comment on them. Kathy is one of those bloggers you really feel you get to know as a person, since she writes passionately (well duh! with a blog name like that), and she shares personal experiences and insights. In spite of not commenting very often, I remain a passionate reader of since we have a shared passion for the ultimate client, the end-user. Although our user audiences differ, the principle remains the same.

After all that preamble, I would like to draw attention to this post: Add a little more random to your product. As a designer of learning resources, I increasingly find that it is necessary to "add more random". The learner is less patient with linear navigation and increasingly wants to explore. Providing the means for a learner-driven adventure in information is tougher, but more rewarding. I am especially keen to create resources that can be used after the initial learning/familiarisation exercise as a random reference resource.

The allegory isn't perfect, but think of a dictionary - and I don't care whether that dictionary is online or taking up six inches of shelf space. Very few people actually sit and read a dictionary (some do, and I say: whatever floats your boat, friend!), however, most homes and offices have one. When a person wants to check the spelling of a word, they reach for the dictionary, check it out, type/write the word and move on. When a kid has just learned to swear and wants to see if the f-word is listed in so august and respectable a publication, he and his mates will sit giggling over the thing for hours as they seek out ever ruder words, little realising the enormous (completely legitimate, totally un-profane) learning exercise they're undertaking. When you encounter an unfamiliar word, you reach for the dictionary, check out the meaning and move on with the thing you were reading. Reaching for the dictionary is a reflex action. Why? Because it delivers the goods so much of the time that it makes it a sensible option.

That's my goal. That's the kind of resource I want to build: Ms Manager sitting in her office faced with a situation she has never encountered before. I'd like her to be reaching for the learning resource we created for her, finding her answer and moving on with her life. Not because it bigs me up in any way, but because then the resource is fulfilling its raison d'etre.

Web 3.0

Okay - we're at the extreme reaches of my knowledge and understanding here, and the air is thin! You have been warned.

This article appeared in the Daily Yomiuri last week. It attempts to identify Web 3.0, a task about which it says, "The first thing to understand about Web 3.0 is that there is little general agreement about what it really means, even among the experts". A blogger in my blogroll recently dipped a toe in this water recently - I could have sworn it was Vicki Davis, but I now can't find the post. However, this is a topic that has had a fair amount of coverage in the blogosphere lately. Check out the following posts, some of which overloaded the wiring in my low voltage brain:

• Welcome Web 3.0
• Web 2.0 and 3.0 for dummies
• Web 2.0, Web 3.0... and Web 4.0 (just to make me feel totally behind the times!)
• Web 3.0 - You ain't seen nothing yet

Wikipedia, it seems, has different ideas - the Web 3.0 page has been "deleted, and protected to prevent re-creation." Who got to make that call, I wonder?

I might be wa-ay off beam here, but it seems to me that metatagging is going to play a huge role in 3.0. But surely metatags are applied by the people who publish the material, and who's to say that the material they publish is accurate - or event that the metatags are appropriate?

At the moment, when I want to know something, I type in keywords and get a list of publications which contain those words - even when they don't actually relate to each other in any meaningful way. Under this system, I briefly scan the most promising looking of these and decide for myself, based on a process I couldn't begin to understand, let alone describe (but which may well have something to do with George Siemens's theory of connectivism) whether the material is valid and reliable.

From what I hear, in 3.0. I should be able to type in a question, rather than a series of keywords. What I'm not quite clear on is whether 3.0 is going to present me with a shorter list of publications, each of which is an accurate match to the context of my words or, whether it will go one step further and provide me with a definitive answer gleaned from the content of the sites trawled. To my limited imagination, the latter sounds like pie in the sky. The former sounds a big enough ask!

In order to be able to achieve the former, my search engine will have to make sense of my question, and align it accurately with the metatags of the published material online in order to make the matches. The latter would seem to require an in-depth grasp of content that I can't even begin to get my head around!

What worries me a bit is what will happen to the process of assessing material for validity and reliability. Having said that, at a stretch I can handle the idea of 3.0 handling validity, but reliability?

Hoo boy - I see another steep learning curve looming on the horizon!

Tags:

• Web
• 3.0
• Vicki
• Davis
• George
• Siemens
• wikipedia
• search
• engines
• metatags

Virtual embassies

As I read the posts in my aggregator every morning certain words are guaranteed to jump out at me. Predictably, these are words that relate to aspects of my personal and/or cultural history. Perhaps I've finally identified a tendency of mine to which I can apply the word atavistic. By extension, I also prick up my eyes, so to speak, when encountering words that relate to my husband's personal and/or cultural history.

Hence my heightened interest when I encountered this post from Mark Oehlert with the word Sweden in the title. I have never ventured into the world of Second Life, but I have been interested to note how it is gaining traction with a most unlikely audience. I have heard of organisations creating SL info portals. Obviously recognising that SL provides access to a market with money to spend, not just a bunch of teenaged computer nerds (I apologise for the stereotype - but I don't think it's a million miles from most people's unconscious assumptions). It seems like a good PR exercise. After all, companies have been creating websites for years to reach the audience of people who venture out into the www.

I was fascinated when Mark attended an SL book signing, bought the book with SL money (sorry - I don't know the proper name for the official currency) and received a hard copy of it through the mail. I also read recently of the sorts of money some people were making selling SL characters, assets and accessories on eBay.

The lines are blurring. I can fully understand Sweden's thinking behing the SL embassy. Their physical embassies have a presence online via websites which serve as an information portal. Why not then a virtual embassy in SL? What I wonder is, can you apply for a visa via the SL embassy and then receive the hard copy via the post? And if so, would you pay for it with SL money or the currency of the country in which the embassy is based?

Tags:

• Sweden
• Mark
• Oehlert
• Second
• Life
• Virtual

Some things don't work online!

This morning I discovered something that hasn't worked online: candlelit romance.

Tuesdays I work at home. Because my laptop has recently decided not to maintain connection to my wifi, I am compelled to do this on the family PC until such time as the problem is solved (by someone more techie than me!). This morning, I find that my efforts are somewhat hampered by the large quantities of wax all over the keyboard! It seems my younger son was attempting to romance the current object of his affections via msn-by-candleight last night. You have to give him credit for originality, but the resultant conjoining of some of the keys is a tad inconvenient, to say the least.

If anyone out there has successfully managed to foster an atmosphere of romance online, I would appreciate any tips that you might have that I can pass on to my son.

Oh, and if anyone knows how to get wax out of a keyboard...

Stranded!

So England hasn't quite finished dishing up quirky weather conditions (see my previous post about the wet drought). Today the wind is blowing so hard that all the rail services from London have been suspended. And guess where I am!

I don't normally work in London, but today I stood in for my ailing boss (who must for the first time be even just a little grateful for his condition) and ran a workshop for some colleagues. Afterwards, I took a rare opportunity to have lunch with my husband - what a civilised way to spend an hour! Then it was time to make my way home, except I arrived at Euston station to be greeted with an unbroken line of CANCELLED CANCELLED CANCELLED across the schedule. I made my way back to my husband's office, where he set me up in a corner with Internet access. From here, I was able to catch up with my emails and blog subscriptions. I love the fact that, in a completely strange environment, I can still be "in the office".

Of course, I don't love the fact that there is still no way home for the foreseeable future. Our two sons are reacting very differently to the prospect of a night without the parents in the house.

Anybody know a way I could email myself home?

Writing skills

• Connectivity

A very wet drought

England is in the grips of a drought. It's the wettest drought in recorded history. I kid you not. Many parts of the country have had hosepipe bans. Yet it has been piddling down very Englishly for days on end. Driving the 20 miles (32kms) to work last week, I passed whole pastures that were underwater.

In some parts of the country the hosepipe ban was lifted. I had a mental image of people dashing out in their wellies to stand in an inch of water and water their gardens with hosepipes. Hmm. Perhaps not. They would be more likely to use the hosepipes to syphon the water off into the drains!

In some parts of the country, the hosepipe ban remains in force. Last night on the news, some poor woman from the water company had drawn the short straw and had to try to explain to the news-watching public why this was the case. Of course it had to do with the reserves - these need to be built up so that there is enough water put by for the summer. But when the water table is so high that rivers have burst their banks left and right, it's hard to imagine that the reserves are anything other than overflowing.

The footage consisted of the woman sitting in stationary position, explaining the matter. With this approach, I don't think the authorities are going to persuade the general public to take the drought seriously, when the evidence of their eyes tells them a very different story.

So how does this relate to the world of learning, knowledge and information? The information we give to people must make sense with what they already know, or what they can see for themselves. If it doesn't, we are going to have to work really hard, not only to provide more information as to why this is the case, but to get them to accept this information and shift their paradigms as a consequence... and that's a hard sell. Those good old fashioned barriers to learning are notoriously hard to shift when they are self-erected-and-maintained.

I was thinking about how this water company representative might have communicated her message more convincingly and thought of this:

• Pictures of the flooded pastures and valleys - commentary to the effect that anyone seeing this sight could be forgiven for thinking that there was a surplus of water in England right now
• Picture of underground water reserves - commentary to the effect that the water supply that feeds our homes and our industries is drawn from here. When it is full, it looks like this (archive picture or graphical representation). Right now, it looks like this (picture of marker, or graphical representation). In order to get through the coming summer, we need at least this much (picture/graphic)
• Brief, simple chalk-and-talk type explanation of why all this above ground water doesn't automatically mean full underground reserves
• Specifics - in order to get the water we need
• it will take at least 3/2/17/whatever more days/decades/weeks of heavy rain in the right areas,
  
• these areas are x, y and z,
  
• the forecast for those areas for the next few days is good/bad/indifferent.

I could be way off beam here, but I can't help thinking that anything would have been more convincing than a lady in a pretty dress telling a waterlogged England that there is a drought on and we should all conserve water.

The big question for January: speed v quality

Tony Karrer has persuaded me that I have input to make on this month's Big Question, namely:

What are the trade offs between quality learning programs and rapid e-learning and how do you decide?

I thought I would duck it, since I have thus far not had any exposure to rapid e-learning per se, but Tony felt differently. He said:

"Karyn - the question is not as much about "Rapid eLearning" as it is about speed vs. quality. And I'm psychic, so I know you face that issue on almost every project you do. :)"

And, in a way, he is right, of course. I have been in this field in its various guises for 20 years now and although my involvement with e-learning only goes back two years or so, the challenge of quality v speed has been ever present. If I were to be flippant, I would probably say: quality every time.

Like anyone (I presume), I prefer to be given enough time and budget to produce a learning resource that will do the job, while looking good. Impress the learner while meeting his needs, why not? Of course, it's easy to say that when time is short we focus on functionality and forget form, and this is what the client usually suggests when proposing a gasp-inducing timeframe. The sad reality is that functionality takes wa-ay longer than form to produce. And I speak as one for whom form is important.

The bitter pill is that, when the schedule (or the budget for that matter) is tight, scoping has to be very tight and some things just ain't gonna happen! There is a serious risk of cutting corners in the analysis and scoping phase of the project, but I suggest that this is false economy. When I'm under time pressure I am even more in need of a tight scope in order to produce an effective resource within the limits placed upon me.

Even when the schedule is tight, the end product must WORK. It must deliver the goods, or it has been time (and therefore money) wasted.

One of the biggest frustrations when there are tight schedules is access to SMEs and stakeholders. Since they have different priorities (usually the day job), they can sometimes take their sweet time getting back to me! It is very important to have a good rapport with these folks.

So I would suggest that the following factors are required:

• A diligent, somewhat ruthless analysis
• A tight scope - signed off in blood, for preference ;-)
• A resourceful, comprehensive design that will enable a quick build...
  
• The tools to achieve a quick build (products like exe or Etomite are good for elearning materials)
• Fast turnaround times on edits and amends
  
• Easy access to and excellent rapport with SMEs (no "us and them)
  
• QA that focuses first on functionality and then on form
• A team that cares about the learner
• A team that is prepared to send out for pizza and get the job done
• A mutually accepted and respected process of change requests

In summary, I guess that while I grudgingly accept that some measure of quality will be lost when tight schedules are in place, some damage control is possible. At the end of the day it's about the user, though - intuitive access/navigation is non-negotiable, and the product must deliver the goods. If this is not possible within the constraints, I guess we need to qualify out of the running for the job. I recognise that internal providers don't have the luxury of this option, so perhaps some assertiveness training wouldn't go amiss - learning to say no without losing your job!

There's probably a lot more I should have mentioned and I'm quite likely to have omitted points that are so vital and integral as to be invisible...

Writing skills

• Tony
• Karrer
• Big
• Question
• January
• Quality
• Speed

Priorities

So it seems Ruth Kelly, Former UK Education Secretary, is sending one of her kids (a child with substantial learning difficulties" to a private school.

Opinion is divided in the Labour Government as to whether this is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing. Tony Blair supports her right to choose the school that she feels will best meet her child's needs (Tony Blair himself has come in for criticism in the past regarding his choice of school for his own children). One Labour MP, however, told her "You should set an example as a minister and support your local school."

If he is able to be a politician first and a parent second, good luck to him. Ms Kelly is quoted as having said "Like any parent, my first thought was to do the right thing for my child." I'm with her: family first, career second. End of.

But for those whose finances don't allow them the luxury of that choice, it is sad that the state school systems are inadequate. The fact that the members of the government themselves are opting out of the education system that the rest of us must make do with is an indictment indeed.

Assessments in elearning

Tony Karrer has posted an interesting look at assessment in elearning, citing Will Thalheimer's post on the subject. Sadly, this reflects my own take on the matter, and not just in respect of elearning, but I find that fewer and fewer instructor-led courses are using anything more than happy sheets.

In my last job, I introduced level 2 - level 1 was already in place, and it was seen as being pretty "out there" to take it to the next level. They patted themselves on the back for being so progressive.

I had a go at getting level 3 in place, but this required the cooperation of line managers so it was pretty patchy. Those who cared about learning and development bought into it, but they were in the minority.

As for level 4... Every time I raised the subject, I got shot down in flames. I was assured I didn't need to produce ROI - my job was secure. There was no way I could get them to drop the knowing smiles and understand the benefits of researching the ROI of the learning I was developing - especially since it was all totally new stuff.

Ironically, within months of my leaving, my replacement was made redundant and advised that it had been a mistake to have an in-house training programme. Without evidence of ROI, she had no evidence to the contrary. All we had was the large collection of emails the staff had sent me before I left, highlighting the difference the learning had made to them, which wasn't considered valid. Secure, huh?

Writing skills

• Tony
• Karrer
• Will
• Thalheimer
• Kirkpatrick
• assessment

New year's resolution... of sorts

Okay, let me admit right up front that I'm not that hot on New Year's resolutions per se. That said, my family and I like to spend New Year's day lunch time reflecting on the highs and lows of the past year and setting some goals for the year ahead. Since I had come down with a thumping case of eyeball-aching 'flu the day before, I found it difficult to stay focused. So we postponed the discussion to this weekend. That has given me time to think...

About 18 months ago I took my current job. For 18 years I had been a classroom-based trainer. For all that time, my role had encompassed the whole gamut of the learning cycle: TNA, design, development, delivery, implementation, evaluation, mentoring, coaching, make the tea, drink the tea... I was immersed in the world of my learners. I loved it and I was good at it, very good at it (if I do say so myself - I have the unsolicited testimonials to back up my boast, scouts' honour).

But I was getting frustrated in my last job. I wanted to introduce some online learning, a portal, some short e-snippets. But he-who-signed-the-cheque wasn't having any: it wasn't the right culture or climate, apparently. So I sought for and found a job that would broaden my experience to include elearning. My current title is Blended Learning Solutions Designer. A bit of a misnomer, really, since I have somehow gotten stuck in an eddy of elearning. I design the elearning component of blended solutions and very seldom get a look in to the workshops, the mentoring, the coaching, and as for contact with the learners (aside from the SMEs)... Try as we might, we have been unable to persuade our clients to let us in beyond a rather narrow remit.

This year, I am determined to change that. I don't want out. I want in. In to designing the blended learning solution as my title suggests. In to contact with the learner - how do I evaluate the effectiveness of my designs without that? In to helping people overcome challenges in the workplace. I don't want to be a vendor, I want to be a provider. I might not work in an educational institution, but I am a teacher nonetheless, and I miss teaching.

Vicki Davis refers to teaching as a noble calling. I think it might actually be a state of being, rather than a titular thing. It might just be the Lemsip talking, but this year I think I need to find a way to re-release the teacher within.

Any suggestions???

Perspective on the wisdom of crowds

An excellent post from Kathy Sierra on this subject. It has been one that has given me the yips for some time. I have enormous problems with the idea of striving towards excellence by adopting the behaviours of swarming creatures (in spite of the fact that I admire their accomplishments). I also have problems discerning any wisdom in the behaviour of crowds at soccer matches. It's good to see someone with Kathy's credibility putting it into perspective.

A sad Christmas

A personal note today.

Today is Christmas. As a Christian, it should be a day that brings me joy. But I heard this morning that a friend lost her battle to cancer on Friday. She was only 33. I don't know the answer to the questions these situations pose, but I am profoundly glad to have had the privilege of knowing her!

How tough for her family that everyone around them is celebrating and partying while they grieve - it must make them feel even more alone in their grief. No doubt every Christmas season from now on will have that little seed of pain. Twenty years ago, my Gran died in the early hours of 19 December (my birthday is 18 December). Her funeral was held on my mother's birthday (21 December). I am familiar with grief of this sort. At least, however, my Gran was a grandmother. Sarah never even got to be a wife and mother. Not that I'm suggesting that this is the only path the fulfillment for a woman, but (a) it is an indication of how short her life was that she never had the chance and (b) it was a path she wanted to walk - she often spoke of her wish to meet someone special.

To everyone out there for whom the Christmas season contains a note of sadness, may you know peace this year.

I'm legal

Just thought I'd share. After 6 months of waiting and phoning and fighting and nagging and being stonewalled, I finally got my permanent residence permit (more correctly known as Indefinite Leave to Remain) on Saturday. It was well-timed as an early birthday present (that was on Monday). It's a huge relief, but the process is ridiculously out of keeping with the requirements of a modern family.

My application was based on the fact that my husband is an EU (European Union) citizen. As a consequence, I had to submit his passport in suport of my application, together with my passport, our original marriage certificate, a letter from my employer, a letter from his employer, four recent payslips of his and four of mine.

The problems started when my husband needed to travel. As the head of IT for a multinational company, he often needs to travel at the drop of a hat. New York, Paris, Carpi... Of course, this means that he needs his passport. Quickly. The process of "urgent" return of documents at the Home Office takes a mere 10 working days. They got very sick of us insisting that we needed it NOW, and my husband had to make many trips to their offices to collect the thing in person.

I can (just about) accept that, as the applicant, I would have to put up with some disruption to my life, and fortunately my job doesn't entail any international travel at present. But why my husband should have endure this nightmare is a mystery to me. Surely we couldn't have been setting a precedent? Surely there must be others in this day and age who travel extensively and who cannot be without their passports for 6 months? Surely!

Since his passport didn't actually need to be stamped, I couldn't understand why they needed to retain it at all. Why didn't they just record the fact that it had been seen and return it to him? In the end, in frustration, we paid £80 to the Swedish embassy for a provisional passport for him and submitted that with my application, while he used the original document.

But what if I had been the one with the jetsetting job? What then? I mean, they can have the payslips and stuff for 6 months if it makes them happy, but the passport thing needs to be reworked to fit in with the realities of life in this age. Surely we have the technology to achieve this?

I was planning to apply for citizenship next year, in order not to have to separate from my family in airports in the future, and not to be the only who has to apply for visas every time we want to go anywhere. But if it means being without my passport for another 6 months, perhaps I'll pass...

Writing skills

• Permanent
• residence;
• ILR;
• bureaucracy;
• passports;
• visas

The king is dead?

Thought provoking post from Scott Karp on the subject of content. Don't miss the discussion going on in the comments. As is so often the case, that's where the debate really unfolds.

In my sector, there are still those who proclaim that "content is king". I'm still coming to terms with my right to disagree with boffins, even though I'm just li'l ol' me. I have a kneejerk tendency to assume that I am mistaken when someone I respect makes a categorical statement about the industry. Last time someone used that phrase I felt very uncomfortable - they seemed so sure of themselves, but I didn't agree. I let it go on that occasion, but am relieved to see the argument seeing daylight here.

Of course, the content of learning resources has to be reliable, valid, etc. But as I see it, there are loads of people who can produce content. Good content. Naturally, I believe that my team and I are among them. Maybe it's because I'm a learning designer that I believe what makes a client go with us rather than a competitor has more to do with design than content. Is it pitched at the right level(s)? Does it cater to the range of users? Is the layout easy on the eye? How intuitive is the navigation? Is the user in control of his journey through the content? How easily will he find what he is looking for? What external/internal/human resources are placed at his disposal? Are there multiple ways in to the content? Is it engaging? Are there opportunities for interactivity? All that stuff...

There are many, many organisations out there producing learning resources. It's a tough market. I agree with Scott that, if we want to grow - in fact, if we want to survive - we will have to do far more than produce good content. Otherwise, our users are likely to stick to Google and wikipedia...

Tags:

• Content;
• Scott
• Karp;
• Learning
• design

Tagged!

Harold Jarche has tagged me with the five things meme. This is a first for me, and I'm not sure how to feel about it. I have read some memes with more interest than others - this is one that gives a bit of trivia-style glimpse into the people behind the blogs. The idea is to give 5 little-known facts about oneself. Since I've met only one fellow blogger before (and I won't tag him because he wouldn't thank me for that!), I could take refuge behind things like my height and eye colour, but I won't...

1. I have a thoroughly normal 21st century family: a sister, a step-brother, a step-father, a step-mother of roughly my own age and a half-sister who is only 12 and is younger than my own children. She and I have only met once - at our father's funeral. By contrast, my children are unusual among their peers, growing up in what used to be a normal family: both parents still on their first marriage and in no danger of quitting.
   
2. I am a deeply committed Christian.
   
3. My paternal grandfather won the battle in north Africa single-handedly. I know this from the stories he never stopped telling, and in which he was always the hero - it seems he achieved more in those scant years than most people would do in 5 lifetimes... Monty was most fortunate that my grandfather wasn't on Rommel's team !-)
   
4. I am married to a Swede, and can speak the language a little. I am better at reading it than I am at conversing, but when conversing, I cope much better with the clipped accents of the east coast than the glottal sounds of the west. Sod's law - my husband's family is mainly from the west coast. I also speak fluent Afrikaans, a smattering of Zulu and Xhosa and can read Dutch.
5. I presented an Afrikaans music TV programme in South Africa in 1988. I was very bad at it.

So there you are. I hope that provides enough variety. So who shall I tag? I am probably a bit late to the game, so the chances are that the bloggers I read have already been tagged. If so, apologies. Here goes (in alphabetical order, no less!):

Doug Belshaw
Vicki Davis
Albert Ip
Jeff Utecht
Wendy Wickham

Writing skills

• meme
• Harold
• Jarche
• Doug
• Belshaw
• Vicki
• Davis
• Albert
• Ip
• Jeff
• Utecht
• Wendy
• Wickham

The Big Question for December

Over at the Learning Circuits blog, the big question for December is... correction, the big questions for December are:

What will you remember most about 2006?
What are the biggest challenges for you/us as head into 2007?
What are your predictions for 2007?

Since the most notable events of my year had little to do with my professional life, I'm tempted to handle this from a purely personal perspective, but fear not, I shall resist. To put things into context, I am a learning solutions designer. So...

What will you remember most about 2006?

• The opportunity to create resources that didn't involve linear navigation (wahey!)
• The publication of George's book Knowing Knowledge
• The terrifying (first hand) discovery that many UK primary school teachers are really pants at maths

What are the biggest challenges for you/us as head into 2007?

• Trying to persuade more paying clients to allow us to create learner-driven resources
• Creating learner-driven resources that add more value than Google and wikipedia
  
• Finding ways to accommodate and even capitalise on the first instinct of learners in the workplace to ask the bloke at the next desk

What are your predictions for 2007?
You know, I don't really feel bold enough to make predictions. I don't know enough!

• I hope that we see more use of ICT in general and social media in particular in schools, and in learning as a whole
  
• I hope that education authorities the world over start to revise their ideas based on input from universities and employers... especially employers
  
• I hope that workplace-based learners will become increasingly pro-active in respect of their learning

Writing skills

• Big
• Question
• Learning
• Circuits

50 Million Bloggers

I was forwarded a newsletter from ITinfo that included the following article by Dave Murphy:

"Technorati, the recognised blog tracking service, reported that there
are fifty-one million blogs were in publication as of today. This is one
hundred times more blogs than were in existence when the tracking
service started, three years ago.

It is estimated, based on Technorati's numbers, that the blogosphere,
the global blog space, is doubling in size about every six months.

One hundred and seventy-five thousand blogs are created every day--two
every second. These aren't blog entires, but new blogs, each with dozens
to thousands of articles. an estimated 1.6 million entries are posted to
blogs each day--eighteen per second. These numbers do not account for
the comments, trackback pings, and e-mail distributions that follow many
of the articles.

While most bloggers post in English--about thirty-nine
percent--thirty-one percent ware written in Japanese. Together, these
languages comprise seventy percent of the blogosphere."

It looks as if blogs are becoming a bit like mobile phones and email accounts.

Writing skills

• Technorati
• Blogs

A stupid question from someone who should know better

Can anyone provide an explanation as to why all my posts these days have the words "writing skills" appended just above the tags? I've look in the template and don't see anything there that explains the mystery...

It's oh so quiet...

It's an odd feeling, this. I have been posting less than usual, due to the fact that I am up to my ears in assignments, a new project and various other commitments. And such posting as I have done has gone utterly unremarked. Even other people's posts on which I have commented have received no other traffic, so my CoComment site has gone equally quiet. I have never been one of the hot bloggers, so my blog posts don't often attract much attention, but this is weird. I feel like the "action" has moved somewhere else, while I've got myself caught in a backwater. I've never been one to post for ratings (although it is gratifying when something I say strikes a chord with someone else), but I didn't realise how much I would miss the inteplay if I ever lost it.

Gary Larson - he of the Far Side cartoon strip (whose request not to have his "children" splurged all over the Internet I shall respect by not trying to reproduce or link to it here) - did a cartoon titled Last of the Mohicans, which shows a lone Native American in a settlement of tipis calling "Little Bear? Running Deer? Where are you guys?" I feel a bit like that.

Did I miss something?

Writing skills

• Gary
• Larson
• CoComment
• Far
• Side

Wisdom of crowds get challenged...

Clive Shepherd has posted about David Freedman's oppositional stance on the subject of the wisdom of crowds. I expect that David Freeman is going to come in for a bit of shtick on this one - it isn't PC to say that a bunch of people together can/will act unwisely, in this age when collaboration is the In Thing and can do no wrong. It is interesting to hear the voice of dissent.

I attended a workshop about James Surowiecki's Wisdom of Crowds some time age, and posted on it at the time. I have to admit that, the whole way through the workshop I was picturing those thousands upon thousands of people listening to Hitler speak and hanging upon his every word, and football crowds running amok, and Lord of the Flies (okay that last one is a work of fiction, and the group might be a little small to be called a crowd, but I pictured it anyway). I couldn't make those images fit with what I was hearing.

I can understand that under certain circumstances, crowds can be said to behave wisely. The 1994 elections in South Africa were a prime example: 90% of the country's population was getting to vote for the very first time. The world expected violence and bloodshed, but what happened was a peaceful, incident-free election.

This was a one-off situation when people consciously decided to strive for what was best for everyone. I fear, though, that the belief that crowds always display more wisdom than individuals is built upon the insubstantiated notion that people - individually and collectively - are always (whether intrinsically or extrinsically) motivated to do right and be the best they can be, and that this driver increases exponentially when people gather together. I have yet to see evidence of this. Many, perhaps even most, people strive to do the best they can for themselves under the circumstances, but doing well and doing good don't always go together... unfortunately.

In a post some time ago, I wailed half in jest: why can't we all just get along, to which Harold Jarche supplied a one-word explanation: greed. For as long as this is the case, I wonder how wise we really will be - collectively or individually.

Writing skills

• wisdom
• crowds
• surowiecki
• shepherd
• freedman

The open hand

When we play cards, the idea is to keep secret from our fellow-players the hand we hold. Not long ago, the same was true of the knowledge we "owned". While card playing hasn't changed much, we have moved to a more generous age in relation to our learning.

Recently, I travelled through to the university campus where I am studying in order to facilitate a mini-clinic in online discussions.

To put this into context:
I don't think I do them a disservice to say that most of my classmates are in their 40s and 50s. There are one or two who may be older, a fair few in their 30s and a mere handful in their 20s. So the class is not exactly overflowing with digital natives! Some of them are still on the fringes of using ICT and one (a classical ballet teacher) had never sent even sent an email message before. One of the requirements of the current module is a certain degree of participation in online discussions. For a few members of the class, this was unknown and scary territory - a place on the map left blank and white and labelled "Heere be dragons ". Understandably, the teaching provided presupposes a certain level of competence. Unfortunately, some of my classmates do not possess this level of competence. Nor do they know how to go about acquiring it. To me, the answer is obvious - I have the knowledge they need and the skills to pass them on. I see no reason for them to continue to struggle for want of something I am in position to provide.

We who inhabit the blogosphere are accustomed to holding our knowledge with an open hand, and having easy access to the knowledge of others, as if playing a game with our cards on the table for all to see and use. Because they do not inhabit the blogosphere, however, my classmates (while grateful) were taken by surprise at my suggestion, and I realised that, a short while ago I might have reacted in much the same way.

It filled me with a renewed gratitude for this community to which I now belong. I have learned so much (and continue to learn, even though I have kept a rather low profile lately, due to time constraints). After even this short time (just over a year), I can't conceive of life without access to the online community - it would be like sensory deprivation.

Writing skills

• Shared
• knowledge
• network
• blogosphere

Writing skills

Brag moment: my 13 year old nephew won an award for this poem. It's called "With these hands" and the young poet's name is Michael Ihlenfeldt.

With these hands - I could touch the sky
I could leap off the ground
Flap my hands and fly

With these hands I could slow down time
I could alter the weather
By simply clapping them together

With these hands I could hold back the rain
I could light up the sun
I could let rivers run

With these hands I could soothe the pain of the nation
I could dry up their tears
Remove all their fears

With these hands - I can do wonderful things
If, deep in my soul
My faith keeps me whole...

I was impressed at his depth and perceptiveness. Bearing in mind that he lives in South Africa - "the pain of the nation" is something he has grown up with - one would almost expect that he would consider this life as usual. It seems either his history teachers have been earning their keep, or my sister has ensured that her children are well up on the tragic history of their country!

Of course the poem is what it is, with a readership or 1 million or none at all, but I wonder if it would have made a difference if he had posted the poem on a blog. When he was advised that he had won the award, he couldn't remember what poem they were referring to (perhaps he writes many such pieces!). I have read so many wonderful blog posts about how kids have been affirmed by having people comment on their work when they have posted it online.

Writing skills

• Poetry
• blogs
• South
• Africa
• History

The future of learning design models

Over at LCB, the Big Question for November is about the future of learning design models (such as Addie, ISD and HPT).

Hmm.

My background has chiefly been in corporate learning and my interest is largely learning in the workplace. In this realm, these models have been very popular and, in some situations, such as technical skills, very useful.

A while back, there was a conversation about whether ADDIE had in fact become DI, and I have worked in organisations where that has been the case: talk about grindingly frustrating! At all costs, we need to avoid that, since the learner's needs are completely ignored. Whether or not we use models, my view is that the learner's needs and the learner experience should be at the heart of what we do.

As I said in a conversation some time back, I suspect we are going to become more and more like the designers of cars: we will provide all the features - it will be the learner who takes the driver's seat and decides where to go, when to go there, how often, how fast and by what route. However, some method still needs to be applied to decide what features to provide and the look and feel of the vehicle -if we are completely without strategy, we are likely to wind up with a resource like Homer's car that includes every feature imaginable, but is hideous to look at, impossible to use and completely outside of everyone's price range.

Happy birthday, Robyn!

Today is my sister's 40th birthday, so I am going to indulge myself with a personal post today. Like many of us, she is trying to convince herself that there has been a gross miscalculation and that she is, in fact, only 39 today. What she doesn't realise is that her milestone birthdays are even worse news for me than they are for her: she is my younger sister, after all!

The idea had been for her to come and spend two weeks with me in the UK at the end of October. This was to have been my gift to her, since (like most of our compatriots) she has never travelled outside of South Africa. She has also never seen autumn - South African trees are mostly evergreens and there isn't really an autumnal period there. But she was unable to come. So I decided to try to send autumn to her. England is very pretty in October - at its prettiest for my money. Photographs are a poor substitute for the real thing, and (unlike Stephen Downes) I'm no great shakes with the camera. However, for what it's worth, I don't think she'll mind sharing this part of her birthday gift with you.

Happy birthday, Robs. I miss you.

Tags:

• Photos
• flickr
• Stephen
• Downes

Tim Berners-Lee sets the record straight

There are times in life when it galls me to be proved wrong. Then there are those times when I am delighted to have one of my negative perceptions debunked. This is one of those times when I am happy to have been wrong.

A while back, I posted about an article on Tim Berners-Lee and his view of Web 2.0. His reported reaction disappointed me deeply. However, it seems he was taken out of context, and he has used his own blog to set the record straight. Hat tip to Vicki Davis for the link.

Tags:

• Tim
• Berners-Lee
• Web
• 2.0
• Vicki
• Davis

Juggernauts and handbrake turns

Interesting post today from Kathy Sierra (one of my all-time favourite bloggers). She's exploring the relevance of the sort of skills imparted in science courses - comparing what is taught to what skills are actually exercised in these fields. This subject has traction and has been explored from various angles by numerous people across a wide range of disciplines. I have to agree with some of the comments that the problem is not unique to the USA. I have been directly exposed to the education systems of two countries (UK and South Africa), and via the blogosphere have vicariously encountered concerns surrounding the Canadian, US and Australian systems.

Recently, during a Learning and Teaching lecture, we were exploring the concept of PLEs in schools. I posted recently on this point, but the lecturer advised me that the matter was receiving attention from on high.

While these are two separate issues, I think they suffer from the same limitations: the bureaucracy and red tape associated with state education systems. We have recognised the changes that need to be made. We know what direction should be going in, but the turnaround time is frustratingly slow. After all, government departments are akin to juggernauts and don't do handbrake turns very well. Perhaps we need to be looking at ways to restructure the education system to improve response times. For all I know - perhaps "we" already are, but that's yet another juggernaut turn. Maybe what we need is a streamlined, nippy little system like the Minis in "The Italian Job".

I wish.

Tags:

• Kathy
• Sierra
• State
• education