Wake up and smell the coffee!

Organisations who choose to steer clear of social media spaces place themselves at risk of having their brand damaged by cybersquatters. Witness the example of Costa Coffee as featured in BusinessZone yesterday.

The Internet is not a 'policed' space... other than by us. You. Me. So people are pretty much free to do whatever they like. As these cybersquatters have amply demonstrated.

Time was once when a business could get by without a web presence. Then it became essential to have a website. We've moved on from that. Web presence needs to spread into the spaces inhabited by the 2.0 and 3.0 web users, otherwise someone might just do that for you!

Armed with rudimentary skills and sufficient malice, a cybersquatter could utterly ruin a business that chooses to remain periscope down in respect of social media. And the tragedy is, as they go into administration, they may still be utterly bemused as to how their once-thriving business hit the skids.

100 ways to learn a language

Increasingly, it is beneficial to speak more than one language.

Online Degree Programs recently posted an article featuring 100 different resources aimed at helping people learn languages online. These include courses through specific schools; online dictionaries; phrase-based tools; translation services; online language communities; games and quizzes; and all manner of other resources.

Languages on offer range from the more common French, English and Spanish to the less widely known Kurdish, Marathi and Romanian.

They also list resources for Mandarin, a language that has been earmarked by many as one to master by those who wish to benefit from the increasing global participation of mainland China in corporate ventures.

On social media policies in the workplace

TrainingZone magazine is running an interesting article by Neil Davey, looking at the rise of social media in the workplace.

Of course, many organisations have a blanket ban on the use of such media... or at least, they think they do. A closer inspection will almost certainly reveal the presence of all manner of social tools in the workplace. This tells me a few things.

Firstly, the understanding among senior execs (and even the IT gatekeepers) of what constitutes social media is often as full of holes as a Swiss cheese, which results in inconsistent bans and rules. So there are often workarounds to access various social media.

Secondly, people are more resourceful than management gives them credit for. Where such bans are in place, many users are resorting to using their phones to access them. At a recent Twitter workshop, several attendees 'owned up' to using Twitter via their phones because of the ban at work.

Thirdly, the 'threat' aspect has been identified, but the 'potential benefit' aspect has been ignored. Davey's article picks up on one significant aspect of this and cites Ann Bevitt of Morrison Foerster:

"Although employers cannot control employees’ use of social networking sites outside the workplace, they can provide guidance where such use could be associated with employees’ employment. For example, if employees choose to identify themselves as employees in their personal social networking activities, they should be encouraged to make clear that any views expressed are their own and not those of their employer. Moreover, no links should be provided to employers’ websites."

This harks back to a topic I have touched on many times - that grey area. Let's look at a hypothesis:

Kate is a designer at ColourCoded, a clothing manufacturer whose lines are aimed at women who have been colour-coded and had their ideal palettes identified. In her spare time, she likes to go hiking.

When Kate engages in social media spaces about the various trails she has hiked, she is on safe territory. She can even develop a global reputation as the go-to person on the difficulty grading of the various hiking trails. No problem.

Kate's employer may have noted her skill with words and they may choose to include social media engagement among her official duties. Part of her job may be to look after ColourCoded's social media presence. This is also relatively safe territory, because the ground rules can be laid down. The dos and don'ts identified.

Where the ground gets shaky is when Kate starts to engage in her personal capacity in social media spaces on the topic of clothing: what styles to wear, what fabrics work for whom, what colours people should wear, etc. It is very tough to lay down the guidelines for her presence in this space, without encroaching on Kate's right to freedom of expression.

This is an area Davey has addressed in his article:

"Organisations – particularly those at the larger end of the spectrum – are faced with an enormous task when it comes to identifying and responding to all of the conversations, questions and posts taking place online about their brand. Businesses need the extra eyes that their employees provide. But by giving their staff carte blanche to respond to any and every post they find, they run a very serious risk of damaging the brand reputation, rather than improving. Any message by an employee that isn’t in line with the company message, or that is offensive or unprofessional, will reflect badly on the brand. The business either media trains every person on its payroll, or risks unleashing a firm’s load of loose cannons onto the web."

I'm not sure that the idea of training every person on the payroll has legs, and, as you know by now, I have an enormous fondness for loose cannons (being one myself). But most organisations have clauses in their employment contracts about damage to the organisation's reputation. Mouthing off down the pub has never really been looked upon with favour, and we're more or less in the same sort of waters, here, albeit with the potential for exponentially increased impact.

I would suggest that guidelines should be set in place - every organisation must consider its reputation, after all. I would further suggest that the organisation should have some form of online induction process, with a link to a range of tools that can provide guidance on company policy on a range of issues (including social media usage). Staff members should be able to access the organisation's policy documents on any subject at any point... and these should be easy to find (it's remarkable that I have any hair left, considering the experiences I have had trying to find policy documents in the past) and easy to read. Policy documents should also be reviewed and revised every now and again, and staff members should be involved in this process.

Staff members should be expected to consider the organisation's reputation, too, and be held to account when their actions are considered to have done damage.

However, the 'training every staff member' thing smacks to me just a little of the sort of butt-covering box-ticking compliance that makes me shudder. It runs the risk of, "Right, we mentioned once during your training course 2 years ago that this was not permitted, so you're fired."

I would like to see an approach that is more dynamic than that, and one which engages the staff members directly, rather than being handed down to them from on high.

Daring to recommend

It's getting so a person dare not recommend anything anymore. Let's consider a scenario:

• Person A recommends product/approach X
• Person B adopts that product/approach for a project
• Project fails and person B slags person A off publicly for the bum steer

One of my new Twitter followers described how he was taking flak at his place of work for having recommended Ning, now that Ning has decided to start charging for its services.

How did that become his fault?

Based on the functionality of the space at the time, and the requirements within his place of work, no doubt it was a good fit. And while the space was free, I presume it served their purposes well, or they wouldn't have felt the wrench so keenly when Ning decided to start levying a charge.

The person in question is quite a young man and this experience could well have damaged his confidence so much that next time he will be reluctant to recommend anything before researching it exhaustively to see whether it will remain stable for the (un)foreseeable future, by which time the need may well have passed. So his recommendations will be slower in coming forward until he is caught up in a cycle of analysis-paralysis... and the organisation will turn to someone else to make recommendations that are more timely (perhaps starting the whole cycle again).

I sincerely hope that this approach does not start to extend to the likes of Jane Hart and her invaluable e-learning pick of the day. Any time I am faced with a challenge and need a new tool to meet it, I pay a visit to her site to see what she recommends. Sometimes the tools do the job for me, sometimes they don't. I am not about to start holding Jane liable every time it doesn't work out.

I sincerely trust that, when I feature something on this site, you're not expecting it to set the world alight for you, okay? I can do without that kind of pressure. ;o)

Web 3.0 - what's it all about?

In case you've been wondering, here is a video that explains the ins and outs, and the pros and cons...

Web 3.0 from Kate Ray on Vimeo.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should

Sometimes we are called upon to design things that we know just shouldn't be designed. Sometimes the client simply won't take no for an answer. Sometimes you want to throw the book at them... or at least lend it to them.

Increasingly, we need less design and more substance. Instead of an expensive elearning course, there are times when a free wiki containing a series of user generated screen capture videos is enough. There are times when we need a YouTube channel more than we need an LMS.

All of these thoughts came thumping home to me recently, when I picked up a few packs of microwave pizzas (as you do, when you have hulking great teenage boys in the house) and saw that they have a special offer give-away thing for a knork.

Now maybe you already know what that is. Heck, maybe you have a whole set of silver plated knorks in your cutlery drawer. But - pardon my ignorance - I had never heard of them before. I had heard of a spork: a hybrid of spoon and fork. I have even used one from time to time, since a few takeaway places issue them with their meals. To be honest, most of the time, I have thought a spoon would do, but the spork has been innocuous enough.

But a knork...? A hybrid of knife and fork...? What the...?

Let's think about this.

I know that cutlery usage can be a little different in the US, but in the UK, we use a knife and a fork simultaneously. One in each hand. The fork holds the food still, while the knife is used to cut it. How do you achieve that with a knork? How do you hold the food still and then cut it when you have only one utensil?

Then there is the little matter of sticking the knork into your mouth. If it has the characteristics of a knife, I presume this thing has a blade on it. In fact, if it caters to both lefties and righties, maybe it has two blades! Now I reckon Pippi Longstocking is right when she says that grownups are superstitious and think it's 'bad luck' to stick a knife into your mouth. I think it could be extremely bad luck indeed. On the other hand, if the blade isn't sharp enough to do you any harm, then I can't see it enjoying much success in the cutting stakes (or even steaks) either.

And so here we have a utensil that is both impractical and potentially harmful. It looks to me as if someone designed it because it could be done, without giving any thought to whether it should be done.

So, yes. We can design a whole series of 20 minute elearning tunnels and stick them into an LMS. We can make it all trackable so that, at any given moment, you can see who has used which materials. But should we?

Will they really add value to your organisation's learning experience? Will they improve performance? Or will they join the list of a long line of expensive things that seemed like a good idea at the time? Could something else do the job better? Maybe an elgg space will suit your purposes just as well. Maybe the solution already exists somewhere in someone's personal job aids, and is just waiting to be shared with the rest of the team.

So before you go out and spend a fortune designing and developing a knork, just check your cutlery drawer to see whether you haven't already got something that can do the trick.

37 instructional design resources

Guide to Online Schools recently published a list of their top 37 instructional design resources, aimed primarily at teachers looking to improve their skills in this area.

Of course, this is not to say that those of us outside of the education system won't also find much of value in the list. For example, several of the blogs in their list are on my daily reading list. It has long been my wish to see the wall between workplace and academic learning come down, after all!

Send us your sample

This strikes me as being a really fun option for teachers of the sciences (among other things).

A company called ASPEX, which produces scanning electron microscopes (SEMs) and microanalysis software has kicked off a campaign called Send us your Sample, which invites anyone to send in an object of their choosing and have it scanned free of charge under one of their SEMs.

You can send in anything you like - a toy bunny, a dead bug or an old toothbrush. It's pretty cool. See their image gallery here.

They also have a rather fun thing called 'name that sample' where you have to guess from the 'after' picture what the object is. Could you have guessed that this was an image of Hall's cough drops? If so, you might have won yourself an Apple iPod Touch.

Teaching us how to vote

For those who don't live in the UK, you may be unaware that we go to the polls on 6 May.

I'm very conscious of the fact that mine is the only vote our family gets. It's somewhat ironic that I need a permit to live in this country, but I get to vote in the national elections. On the other hand, my husband and sons are EU citizens and need no such permit to live here, but they can only vote in local and EU elections.

Be that as it may, it's been quite interesting to see the methods being used to try to help me decide how to cast my vote.

For the first time ever, there have been presidential type TV debates featuring the leaders of the three main parties. Since we're not voting in a leader but a party, this is fairly odd, because it panders to the personality brigade. I tend not to watch the debates themselves, but to read up on the summaries afterwards.

There are also several quizzes online, where I can identify my stance on a series of issues, and discover which party's policies most closely match my own.

Then the Christian Institute has provided listings of how each MP has voted on a series of moral issues, so that I can decide whether I'm happy that my views are being represented in Parliament (whether or not you agree with the CI's estimation of what constitutes morally right and wrong decisions, it still helps to provide a sense of where your MP stands on sensitive issues).

Yet in spite of all this, apparently only one in three first time voters will go to the polls. Apathy is a real issue, here. Fewer than two in three voters overall are likely to cast their vote. So, chances are that the party that gets in will in fact represent about 20% of the country's eligible voters. That's hardly a strong platform on which to lead a recession-ridden country into an uncertain future.

Cherry tree census

The Natural History Museum is currently running a census of cherry trees in Britain. The idea is for people to go on walks and spot cherry trees and then record them on a map.

Guidance is provided on how to identify cherry trees and how to distinguish between the various types.

I really like these attempts to engage the wider public, and to publish this user generated content. My parents regularly participate in similar exercises in respect of birds and plants in South Africa, setting off at ridiculous hours of morning to count parrots or heading off on some jaunt to record clivia numbers (they're very keen on clivia, my folks!)

At the moment, my town shows only four cherry trees, two of which I recorded. I know for a fact that there are hundreds more. Let's hope that we see more being added.

If you're based in Britain, or even if you're just here for a conference or business trip, why not add to the census?

Most influential women in tech?

The Fast Company has posted their 2010 list of the most influential women in technology. Of course, there will be those who are surprised to have been included, and those who are furious not to have been listed. But the list makes for interesting reading.

Reward

The whole theme of reward or cause-and-effect is exercising my mind lately. Mostly it just goes in circles.

I'm not about to disinter Pavlov, but I can't help feeling that we should be looking to reward desired behaviours in education, in the workplace and even in society in general.

Obviously, the nature of the reward would have to be made appropriate to the context. I can't see us giving a newly appointed manager a star for sharing his crayons with the person at the next desk.

Recently, my elder son asked me to intervene in a situation for him. He had lent a sum of money to his younger brother. It seems my younger son was going to repay this debt at £5/month, interest free. But that would take several months, by which time my elder son will have finished school and started his gap year in Australia. So he asked if I would give him the money, and let my younger son repay me at this rate.

I agreed, but I shouldn't have. The thing is, my elder son lent the money to his brother without establishing the terms of repayment first. This is not a very wise thing to do, and in taking over the debt, I have rewarded his poor choice. It isn't a lot of money in the grand scheme of things, so this would have been an ideal opportunity for a bit of tough love. A lesson to be learnt at no great cost.

I'm too much of a softie!

As I see it, the exam system also rewards the wrong behaviours. I know some kids who seem pretty dense, to be honest. They seem to know nothing about anything, and are utterly unable to hold a meaningful conversation about anything of substance. And yet they are in the top set for all their subjects at school, raking in the A grades. If education is preparation for life, the behaviours that should be rewarded are surely things like the ability to find information on a given subject, establish whether information is valid/reliable, apply information to a situation that does not exactly mirror a case study, work as a team, delegate responsibility, meet a deadline, be innovative with limited resources, overcome obstacles. You know... real life stuff.

We're a long way from that, I reckon. Probably mainly because we're a long way from knowing how to assess those skills!

I used to share a house with a few long distance truck drivers when I was a student. These guys were paid a certain fee to haul a load from point A to point B. They would get a bonus for doing it extra quickly. Not only that, but if they managed to shave a day off the delivery time, that gave them an extra day to start earning on the next project. So any time saved gained double rewards, financially speaking. So these guys would drive for 24 hours at a stretch, overdosing on caffeine in attempt to stay awake. There is no doubt that they constituted a hazard to other road users and themselves. In fact, I heard a couple of years back that one of them had been killed in an accident.

But the system was such that they were rewarded for this behaviour.

I have heard many tales of teenage girls in the UK, fed up with their parents restrictive rules, deliberately becoming pregnant in order to qualify for additional benefit payments and perhaps get a council flat. I'm not pretending to know a better way to respond in this situation, but it strikes me that this is another example of rewarding the wrong behaviour.

Like I said, my mind has been going in circles on this subject. I'm not sure I have any constructive answers, but I guess a change to the education system wouldn't hurt!

Blog Interviewer

I was recently interviewed by Blog Interviewer in respect of this blog. You can see the results here.

Top 50 education innovator award

I don't know if you noticed my shiny new badge on the top left of this blog. I have no idea who nominated me for it, but I presume it must be someone who reads this blog regularly, so no doubt you will read this post. Whoever you are, thank you. I'm flattered.

See here to learn about the other 49 recipients.

Stepping out of the boat

I am somewhat behind on my reading, which may explain why I have not previously seen this article from Megan McArdle in Time (thanks to my husband for the pointer).

McArdle talks about the importance of safe failure to the economy. In fact she says, "failure is one of the most economically important tools we have". She bemoans the fact that, "instead of celebrating all our successes in building systems that fail well, we've become wedded to the fantasy of a system that doesn't fail at all."

Isn't it interesting how the very things we have been saying in respect of learning and education are being said here about the American economy? And it's hardly surprising, really. If we create an education system that stigmatises failure, we can only expect that that stigma will carry over into all other arenas of life... including the economy. It's all linked. It's all part of the one thing, the big picture.

I'm with McArdle when she says, "rather than launch a quixotic war on failure, we should be using what we've learned to build a system that fails better". We should be adopting this approach to education, too. The only people who never fail are the people who never do anything. We should be stigmatising never doing anything.

This puts me in mind of the story of Peter walking on the water (Matthew 14). Preachers often use this story to illustrate weakness, lack of faith, etc. I tend to think, hang about a bit... what about the eleven losers in the boat who didn't even try? Peter tried. Sure, he failed after a few steps, but he had an experience none of the others could claim... because he gave it a shot. We need a few more Peters, I reckon!

Let's be about encouraging people to step out of the boat, and about catching them when they start to sink.

The fun theory

I love this! I found it via a post by Ewan McIntosh about analogue creativity.

Geeks like me have been saying this for years: make it fun and people will do it. Treat them like sheeple and they will behave like sheeple.

Proposed ban on smoking in cars

There is currently a move in the UK to have it made illegal to smoke in cars and parks because of the risks posed to children by the secondhand smoke.

I don't smoke (any more - I quit 22 years ago). I don't approve of smoking. I don't approve of people subjecting their children to their secondhand smoke. I didn't let anyone smoke near my children when they were little. But:

• There are many other things I don't approve of in respect of the way people choose to raise their children. Tough. Unless I think violence is being done, it's none of my business.
  
• Children are exposed to secondhand smoke in homes where parents and family members smoke - I can't see the government banning that!
• Who will police this thing? Will cops on the beat now have to add this offence to the many others they're supposed to prevent? The use of mobile phones while driving has been banned, but goes entirely unpoliced... and that, at least, is a traffic violation. Who will police a health and safety violation on the roads?
  

I can think of many things which place children at greater risk than people smoking in cars, some of which it would be very politically incorrect to even mention. Are we going to start placing a ban on those next?

I believe we can educate and warn people, but we cannot take away their right to make stupid decisions.

My 2p worth.

Earth hour 2010

I have often been asked how much of a difference I think I can make with regard to the whole 'green' thing, because, they tell me, I am only one person.

This is true. I am only one person. I am very glad of that. It would be quite tricky to keep track of myself if I were several people! The thing is you're only one person, too. Everyone is only one person! But together we are two people, and three people, and 10 people and more than 6.6 billion people.

And we are each accountable for our own actions.

Tomorrow I will mark Earth Hour. I am only one person, and this is something I can do. I will probably light a lantern and read a book by its light.

How about you?

User empowerment... from my new watch!

Last night my husband arrived home with a gift for me, to congratulate me on finally completing my Masters' degree.

The gift was a beautiful Fossil watch in a case that was almost as gorgeous as the watch! Because I have ludicrously puny wrists, I took one look at the watch strap and said, "I'm going to have to take it in to have it made smaller."

My husband grinned triumphantly. "No you don't. You can do it yourself. It's designed like that."

And blow me down, it is. There are three fixed links on either side, then after that, each link connects with a clasp. I kid you not: a clasp! No fiddly pins for which you need magnifying glass and watchmakers screwdrivers. Such an elegantly simple solution.


So not only could I remove enough links to make the watch fit me now, I can remove more if I lose more weight, or add them back in if I (heaven forefend) gain it, or have a bout of water retention.

How cool is that? JIT watch adjustment. I feel so empowered!

Goodbye butts in chairs...

How did I ever miss this? Thanks to Harold Jarche for the pointer (on Facebook).

Please pardon my crowing....

... but I just heard that I passed my final paper. I have a Masters' degree. It has taken far longer than anticipated, because I had a bit of a breakdown in the middle, but I did. I actually did it!

Next up, sign language course.

What? Why are you looking at me like that? It's called lifelong learning, and I've wanted to learn sign since my niece's deafness was diagnosed in 1988!

Can I say it again? Loud enough to be heard by the lost little girl who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. You did it, kiddo!

Ada Lovelace day

Today is Ada Lovelace day when we celebrate women in technology. I'm not usually much of a one for girls-only recognition, but perhaps we are still a long way from the point where technological jobs are seen as being as open to women as they are to men.

I have to say that I think the exception is the field of ICT and related matters. Because of the relative newness of the field and the speed at which it has developed, there was no time for sexism. So, instead of writing about a particular woman in information/comms technology, and instead of extolling the many virtues of the women in my network, I am going to take a slightly different approach.

I would like to give a shout out to all the anonymous female motor mechanics, electricians, engineers of all kinds, fighter pilots, microsurgeons and so on. All the girls who hold their own in fields still largely seen as the male province.

When I was coming to the end of high school, I really wanted to be a mechanical engineer. I wanted to design machines. I like the way machines work and they make sense to me. Since we had no money to speak of, I was going to need a bank loan, so we set about applying for one. Every bank manager we saw told me the same story: they were not going to lend money to a girl who wanted to study mechanical engineering, because the attrition rate was too high, the risks too great and the return on the investment doubtful. I was encouraged to consider chemical or light current electrical engineering instead. Since I was hopeless with both those areas of the science curriculum at school, I had no interest in going that route.

I admire those women who haven't taken no for an answer. Who have activated their 'I'll show you' button and who earn their keep doing jobs that their grandmothers never heard of and that their mothers thought only suitable for boys.

One such anonymous woman was my husband's late aunt Gunnel Bjureblad, who was an engineer. She died four years back, aged 70-something, and I imagine the opposition she faced in her day was even tougher than my own, especially since her Dad thought that education beyond the age of 14 was wasted on a girl.

Call it a cop out if you like, but I salute the Gunnel Bjureblads of the world today. All of them.

An unexpected hero

If you live outside of the UK, you may not have heard of Eddie Izzard. Okay, you might have done - he appeared in My Super Ex-girlfriend as the misunderstood baddie who was in love with the super ex of the title.

In the UK, he is better known as a comedian (severe language warning on linked video) and a transvestite who frequently appears at gigs in towering heels and a full face of make-up.

He's intelligent and articulate, but he is not an athlete... or so you would think.

But with relatively little fanfare, last year he ran 43 marathons in 51 days in aid of the charity, Sport Relief... and raised £1.6 million!

He prepared for only 5 weeks and at the start, was carrying a fair old spare tyre. But he argued, this is what we were designed to do. And I guess he's right. Before the wheel came along, we had to walk or run everywhere, and the stone age didn't boast a Tesco or a Walmart, so it was run - a lot - or go hungry.

He ran mostly alone and largely unremarked, as this article in The Guardian explains. Catching snippets of the BBC series about his efforts, I have to say that my heart swelled and I developed a new found respect for this rather unusual man.

Well done, Eddie. I salute you. You put us all to shame.

Harold Jarche on PKM

Harold has written a nice post about personal knowledge management today. Check it out.

Those wretched hoops!

Our younger son is closing in on his final GCSE (general certificate of secondary education) exams, and recently brought home his 'long report' which provides parents with the following information for each subject:

• How your child is performing in terms of his/her attitude/behaviour in class, effort and homework completion - these are subjective scores allocated by the teacher on a scale of 1-5, with 1 being poor and 5 being stellar
• Your child's target grade and how he/she is currently performing against that
  
• A paragraph of reflection by the teacher: areas for improvement and so on

The last few weeks have been frantic, as the unfinished parts of the syllabus in several subjects are crammed in. The entire form recently had to stay on for an extra two hours every day for a week, in order to complete the work in subject X. Some of them are still doing this. My son has had no lunch breaks for weeks on end as he tries to complete the units of the syllabus in subject Y that the rest of the form did the year before he joined the school.

I don't understand why this all has to be done now. Surely it was known from day one when he joined the school two years ago that he was going to need to make up the extra year in subject Y? Surely that work could have been spread across two years rather than being crammed into these last few weeks? Surely it was evident months ago that the entire form was falling behind on subject X? Why does it all have to be done now? Especially since they are also frantically trying to raise several thousand Pounds for a school trip to Ecuador (anyone got a small fortune going spare?) in the summer.

My son's tutor remarked that he appeared to be showing signs of the strain of the additional workload and needed to find ways to break it down into manageable chunks. I commend her for her insight into his character, but I'm not sure what the poor kid can do.

In the context of all of this, one particular piece of feedback had me reaching for my poison pen. In subject X, my son's predicted grade is a B. His scores for attitude, homework completion and effort are all 5s. His recently submitted coursework received an A grade. The short paragraph from the teacher started "Your coursework was disappointing..." Excuse me? This is a model student who is outperforming his predicted grade and you are disappointed?

My son is talking about taking the work back and tweaking it so that he can get a better A or an A*. My advice to him is to let it be. He has enough else on his plate right now, and that A is in the bank. But the school is encouraging him to try to up that grade.

I know of another school where several kids are being pressured to resit a maths exam in attempt to up their grades from A to A*.

I'm casting about for a word to describe this and I'm tempted to go with iniquitous. What are we doing to these kids?

Taking YouTube videos offline

I was certain I had posted about this before, but I can't seem to find the post. Apologies if I'm repeating myself!

A lot of people in this space are frustrated by the fact that access to YouTube is blocked within their organisations. I think we've satisfactorily established that, while there is an inevitable amount of dross on YouTube, there is also a wealth of material that is useful. When reputable organisations like WWF, MIT, and the OU have their own channels on YouTube, surely it is time for a paradigm shift?

But if you are still bumping your head against the firewall, there is a chink of light. If you have identified some YouTube videos relevant to the learning needs within your organisation, you can take them offline. Appropriately enough, there is a YouTube video to tell you how to do this:



Of course, this is a long way from having all of YouTube at your disposal, but it's a start. If nothing else, it will demonstrate to your learners the value of YouTube as a learning tool.

The message seems finally to have gotten through in my own home. My younger son has recently decided to take up rugby. In a rugby mad family, he was always the one person who has been uninterested in the sport. But recently, he has been playing at school and has discovered an innate talent a passion for the game. Of course, he now has a lot of catching up to do, since most of the other kids have been playing for years.

To my delight, and entirely of his own volition, he went the YouTube route. Having discussed with us the role of each positional player within the team, he decided that he was most likely to play on the flank (numbers 6 and 7, sometimes known by the older name 'wing forward'). Over the past couple of weeks, he has completely immersed himself in videos about the rules of the game in general and the role of the flank in particular. He has also taken every opportunity to watch live rugby with us, questioning us endlessly about the reasons for stoppages. Then he has had a go at explaining to us what the deal is, to see whether he is getting the right end of the stick.

The learning anorak has spawned a self-driven learner, ladies and gents. My cup runneth over.

Peter Casebow and Jay Cross in conversation

Peter Casebow has recorded a skype conversation between himself and Jay Cross about learning and performance.

Don't expect slick production and such like - expect a conversation. That's what it is.

Increasingly, I would say we need to learn to regard resources like this as valid constituents of our learning experience. There isn't always time or money to repurpose material and make it shiny.

So you think social media are for socialising, huh?

Jane Hart, who can be relied upon to have her finger on the pulse, is building up a series of case studies of the use of social media "INTERNALLY for social and collaborative learning and/or performance and productivity improvement".

The examples (at the time of writing) include British Telecom; Pearson; BUPA; WWF; Nationwide and NASA. And the list os growing. If you'd like to add to it, please get in touch with Jane via the link on her site.

Bear with me...

This blog is undergoing some redesign, and may be a bit unpredictable over the next few days.

Magical augmented reality

How's this for a magical use of technology for kids?

The publishers say:
"This is a sneak preview of the animation that is in our new book 'What Lola Wants...Lola Gets' that uses 'Augmented Reality' which will be published on the 1st of April 2010 by Scribblers, a division of Book House. "

On that wretched academic/corporate divide

I find the divide between academic learning and corporate learning unhelpful, and I'm sure I'm not alone. In his comment on my recent post, Garry Platt touched on a point that has been niggling away at me for lo, these three and a half years past.

He said:

I think one possible reason why academic reviews of mainstream ‘management’ models are not more accessed and taken account of by trainers and developers is in part to do with the style of writing used. In many cases, the majority in my experience, reviews, positive or otherwise of models or concepts are in written in a style and English which is incredibly hard to understand. This in my view merely reflects a ridiculous style that academia deems as necessary. I can absolutely see the need for precision but the unnecessary use of big words when little ones will do and sentence structures of an arid and ridiculous length just make things worse.

Now, I'm not sure I would always go along with the big words/little words argument. I recently read a headline that said 'lots of people hurt in smash' and ground my teeth. I don't see the problem with 'several people injured in collision', but perhaps that's just me... and as for the over-use of the word 'big'! Well, don't even get me started.

But I digress.

My greatest obstacle on my (now almost complete, and about time, too!) Masters' degree has been that of writing style. The following is part of a conversation that took place on my Facebook page on Sunday:I'm not sure what I can add to that, except to point out that the value and applicability of research appears to be severely hampered by the requirement for a certain type of language. Surely this defeats the purpose of research?

I think I would rather enjoy an exchange of views among corporate learning professionals in which more than the usual token handful have read the research. As it is, as soon as the subject of research is raised, you can almost hear the shutters come down with a clang. I suspect some are hard pressed not to jam their fingers in their ears and yell "LALALALALAAAAAA!!!"

On not needing to know

I have often bewailed the fact that I am neither fish nor fowl when it comes to the world of learning. I don't work in the field of formal education and my academic writing skills are the about on a par with my squash: I have a go at it, but I'm not terribly successful, and I haven't ever figured out what it is I need to do differently. Ergo, I am not an academic.

I work mainly with corporates in the field of workplace learning. But here, I encounter learning and development professionals without the slightest interest in the stuff that ignites the spark in my eyes and gets my hands waving.

Apparently, we workplace learning bods don't need to trouble ourselves with all that geeky theory stuff. Or so they keep telling me.

And yet they talk about six sigma and red hats and black hats. They talk about Honey and Mumford and MBTI and VAK. They talk about Kirkpatrick. They talk about management styles. They talk about the trends in presentation techniques.

What they don't seem to realise is that is the realm of theory. Theory they have often acquired umpteenth hand somewhere along the way, liked the sound of and adopted into their lexicon or practice without a second thought.

I find this irresponsible. Surely, before you impart something, and/or allow something to influence the way you teach/train/facilitate, you should explore it to make sure that it is sound? Otherwise, how is it any better than perpetuating rumour?

I was chatting to a young teacher friend last night and she was talking about the ways in which her school is attempting to engage parents in the education of their children. To get them to see that they are in fact their children's primary educators (music to my ears!) and their responsibility to their kids extends beyond dropping them off at the school gates washed and dressed each morning.

Some years ago, I had to receive therapy after a cycling accident. As we discussed my symptoms and my proposed treatment, my therapist asked if I were medically trained. When he saw my puzzled face, he estimated that at least half his patients (in an affluent town with an educated populace) would have trouble distinguishing between their liver and their kidney and saying with certainty how many they had of each.

I could cite a few more examples, but had best stop before I get into full spate. It seems to me that, in this age when almost any information you want or need is available to you at the click of a button, there are still far too many people seeing it as someone else's job to know stuff.

Well, whose job is it then? Whose job is it to know whether the content of your learning materials is sound? Whose job is it to know whether the management style model you're applying is reliable? Whose job is it to know what your children are being taught at school... and how well they're coping with it? Whose job is it to monitor the health of the only body (and mind) you're ever going to be issued?

I guess it's a symptom of my irredeemable geekhood that I simply can't understand how people can not want to know. How they can not be consumed with curiosity about the stuff that impacts their lives and the lives of people they care about.

Of course, none of us can know everything. And we certainly can't understand everything. There are times when even rampant curiosity is not going to be enough. When we want to know something, but simply don't understand it. Then you have to decide whether it's worth it to you to invest the sort of time and resources necessary to acquire that understanding. Often it isn't, so you cut your losses and move on.

But then don't present that material as fact to hordes of people and claim that it isn't your business to know the theory.

Looking back over the furrow

This morning, for some reason best known to itself (possibly due to the partnering with Ingboo) my Technorati search on my name returned 200 hits. I'm sure there are some people for whom this is a daily occurrence. I am not one of them. My name crops up only occasionally, so I had a moment of panic when I wondered what I might have done to cause such a flurry of interest.

As it turns out, none of them are new. But I found myself reading back over old posts from a number of people with whom I have I have engaged in online discourse over the past few years or so.

I also found myself rereading some of my own posts and was really glad of the title of this blog. Because, boy oh boy, I don't exactly plough a very straight furrow! But I'm not a farmer and straight furrows are not among my goals. This is a learning journey. And I have learned. A lot. I have also, and this never fails to fill my insecure little heart with joy, been a part of other people's learning journeys (for good or ill).

As far as I can remember, today is not a red letter day. It is not my anniversary as a blogger, or my x thousandth post. It's just an ordinary day on which some small thing outside of my control made me pause and look back.

If you're reading this post, you have been a part of that crooked furrow. So I'd like to thank you. Just off the top of my head, a few names that deserve special mention are (in no particular order):
Harold Jarche
Janet Clarey
Stephen Downes
Wendy Wickham
Christy Tucker
Virginia Yonkers
Tony Karrer
Don Taylor
Mark Berthelemy

Virtual hugs to you all!

On passion

I watched the recent men's Olympic ice hockey finals with bated breath. How Americans and Canadians managed to get through it without a coronary is beyond me.

But I was tickled by the iconic status of the Canadian netminder (read goalkeeper) Roberto Luongo. Of course, he was a local boy, playing as he does for the Vancouver Canucks, but I doubt that that was the only explanation for the basso profundo roar of "LUUUUUU!!!" that went up every time he touched the puck. The commentators were at great pains to explain that the crowd wasn't booing, because it did sound rather like it.

The South African rugby team has a similar figure in the form of Tendai Mtawarira aka The Beast. Every time he touches the ball, the entire stand thrums as every supporter chants a throaty "BEEEEEEEEAST!!!!" As we watch him play, at a remove of several thousand kilometres, and sometimes several hours (or even days) my family does it, too. Four throats joining in with the many thousand in the stands.

These characters have inspired an astonishing level of devotion among their supporters. In an odd way, Kwame Nkrumah Acheampong had a similar effect. Apparently the crowd was still chanting "Ghana! Ghana!" an hour after his run. So we can tell that it isn't necessarily about superior skills.

I suspect that it is about passion. All these men (and I'm sure there are women like this, too) share an indomitability. They simply don't know when to quit. They. Will. Not. Be. Stopped. In this civilised age, I find it heartening that we are so ready to be won over by this level of passion. There is nothing civilised about the responses to the endeavours of these sportsmen.

In fact, let me tell you a little tale. Some years ago, I attended my sons' school sports day. All the parents were doing the usual thing of yelling their heads off for their kids and their friends' kids. Then up stepped a lad I'll call David Michaels. David had a particularly virulent form of muscular dystrophy and it was evident that this was the last year he would attend sports day on his own two feet. As the children lined up for the race, David was given a huge head start. Believe you me, there wasn't a dry eye in the place and, regardless of who they had come there to support, every child, every teacher and every parent present roared for David. Even with the head start, he wasn't able to win, but he did finish second, and the roar that went up was greater than for the rest of the events combined. David would not quit. In fact, the next year, he was back. This time in his wheelchair, being pushed by a willing volunteer.

I understand this level of passion. I'm a passionate person myself. As such, I know full well that these people have encountered naysayers, detractors and Job's comforters at every step along their journey. In order to get to where they are (even young David, who may well not even be alive any more), they will have had to refuse to buy into the 'good advice' that people have given them.

There are times when our battle on the learning front gets tiresome. There are days when we are tempted just to pack it in and go back to designing mind-numbing tunnels of back and next buttons. On those days, I reckon we could do worse than watch a brutal, uncivilised clash of sporting Titans to stir up the blood again. To remind ourselves that we might be fully clothed, erudite grown-ups on the outside, but every now and again, the inner savage needs a bit of legroom.

How's your inner savage today?

;o)

Keeping things current

As you may know, I am in the process of acquiring a new passport, my previous one having expired.

I visited the space that glories in the misnomer 'website' to find out what I need to do. The website consists of one page, regardless of which of the links one selects. The only thing that changes is a line of introductory text across the top.

I printed off a checklist of everything I needed to take with me, and made sure I had it all. Two forms, completed. Check. Previous passport. Check. Two certified copies of data page of passport. Check. Two certified copies of full marriage certificate. Check. Four passport photos of an old and haggard looking woman that people will insultingly believe is me. Check. Cash to pay for passport (no other tender accepted). Check.

I joined the back of the queue outside the consulate. The man in front of me told me he had come to collect his passport. He applied for it in July and received an email yesterday to tell him it was ready for collection! Speedy service it isn't. I only hope mine is quicker than that, I have a fair amount of travelling planned.

While I was waiting, I noticed several people being sent away to a nearby photocopy service to get this or that document copied. Two thoughts occurred to me about this. First, the website informs visitors that documents can be copied on the premises. I had chosen to get mine done in advance because the cynic in me wanted to avoid the possibility of "the machine, she is broken" - heard all too often in South Africa. Second, why hadn't these palookas printed off the list as I had done, to ensure that they had everything they needed. I began to feel a little smug. Obviously, the machine, she - blow me down - was broken, and I was going to be one of the few who had prepared for this possibility. Ha!

When I finally got the front of the queue, I opened my neat envelope and handed all my tidily organised documents to the lady on the desk. She told me my application was incomplete because it did not include two certified copies of my UK permanent residence permit. I pointed to my neat list and explained that this was not a requirement for this application. Oh, but it is, apparently. The website is wrong. I would have to go around the corner to a photocopying place and have it done. I reminded her that the website clearly states that copies can be made on site. I asked if the machine, she was broken. Apparently not. Apparently the website is incorrect on this score, too.

So, like all the other 'palookas' before me, I had to go off and have some additional items copied.

Some time ago, I created an online resource for a client. Included in the deal was that I taught them how to update the site whenever any of the data it contained became obsolete. I encouraged them to use fresh, up-to-the-minute material, but to keep a weather eye out for the need to change it.

In a situation where users are dependent on the accuracy of the content of a site, it is important not to let them down.

Sadly, although I'm sure several people have tried to explain this to the South African Consulate (myself included), they seem to think that it is sufficient to simply say to a person who has gone to significant expense to be there in person (my train ticket was over £80!) that the website is wrong.

The machine, she is not the only thing that is broken!

On requirements that can no longer be met

Recently I reflected on actions that people continue to do, long after they cease to add value. Today I came across a related situation.

What about requirements that can no longer be met?

I have to apply for a new passport, because my last one has expired. Among the requirements for the new passport are a copy of the data page of my passport and two copies of my original marriage certificate. Fine. I have these to hand.

The problem is that they have to be certified copies of the original.

I used to work for a local authority in the Town Clerk's department. The Town Clerk, his deputy, the Town Treasurer and his deputy were all authorised to certify documents. They carried the title Justice of the Peace (if you please). And it was something they were asked to do from time to time. Someone would pop in with a document. We would photocopy it and then certify it on the back. No problem. I even did it myself once when, for a whole day, due to poor scheduling all four of the abovementioned office-bearers were out of town and I was acting Town Clerk (at the grand old age of 23, if you don't mind!).

So today, I took my documents, originals and copies to the police station, being fairly sure that there would be someone there with the authority to certify the copies for me.

Nope.

"We are not allowed to do that any more."

Instead, it seems, the copies must be certified by a professional person (whatever that means) who knows me personally.

"Such as?" I was fairly sure this didn't include my husband. The police officer adopted a pained expression.

"Like your lawyer. Or your bank manager."

Right. Because I am constantly being sued left and right and have a lawyer on retainer. And because my bank manager knows me personally. Heck, who can even phone their bank manager in person these days? It's a good thing that I have an accountant on retainer for my business, because he has agreed to do it.

If someone knows you personally, surely that brings their impartiality into question. I was under the impression that such people had to be impartial witness types. If the office of the justice of the peace has fallen away, then why is this requirement still in place? It's like being asked to turn the crank handle on a modern car before being issued with a driving licence. And what if you simply don't number such people in your circle of acquaintance. For example, what if I was Jo Bloggs the supermarket shelf-packer? I'm fairly sure Jo won't have an accountant. A pastor, then (just in case my accounting was unavailable, I had asked the officer if my pastor could do it, and she assured me that he could). But perhaps Jo Bloggs doesn't go to church. Then what?

If you are simply unable to fulfill this requirement, do you go passportless into that good night?

I can't see why they don't just have a photocopying machine at the passport office, and a person on hand to certify that piece of paper A is definitely a copy of piece of paper B, because he saw it being copied. So there.

And why are are faffing with bits of paper anyway? Why can't we just scan the damned things into the system once and for all and be done with it? So that next time I go there, they still have a copy of my marriage certificate and the data page of my expired passport on record.

Ugh. Now I have to go to London tomorrow and stand in an interminable queue. And the passport might still take so long to be issued that I am unable to make it to eLearning Africa in Zambia at the end of May.

Faff. Faff. Faff.

Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong

Meet my favourite 2010 Olympian, a Ghanaian, born in Scotland, an alumnus of my husband's alma mater in South Africa, and now living not far from us in England. I met Kwame at a church meeting in Milton Keynes a couple of years ago and was touched by his ambition. This is a man who seeks to break of the stereotypical mould. For example, he represented Ghana in a tennis tournament in years gone by.

His journey to the slalom and giant slalom events in Whistler has been a tough one. There have been times that he has had to sleep in his freezing van in Canada, because of a lack of sponsorship. Good Samaritans have since stepped forward to help out, it seems, and he has been provided with lodgings.

I love stories like this!

Join Kwame's fan page on Facebook to get an idea of the inspiration he has given to so many ordinary people.

Will Thalheimer on learning styles

If you've been reading this blog for a while, it can't have escaped your notice that I am not an adherent of the concept of learning styles. I have written several blog posts and articles on the subject (I won't bore you by linking to them).

Like Donald Clark (to whom thanks for the pointer) I hope that this blog post from Will Thalheimer, and the research it cites will finally begin to draw a curtain on this silliness.

There is... a great gap from... heterogeneous responses to instructional manipulations—whose reality we do not dispute—to the notion that presently available taxonomies of student types offer any valid help in deciding what kind of instruction to offer each individual.

Enough now.

Happy anniversary, Madiba

Just before midnight rolls around and brings an end to this red letter day, I would like to just mark the fact that 11 February 2010 is the twentieth anniversary of Nelson Mandela's release from prison.

A very important day in the history of South Africa and - arguably - the world.

On being knocked off kilter... by Hitler

Be informed that comment moderation is in place on this blog and I will not allow this post to be the springboard for the expression of anti-semetism, neo-nazism or holocaust denialism. Any such comments will not be published.

This post has been very hard to write. This has been an uncomfortable learning experience for me, and I am assailed with uncertainty as to the reactions it will garner. I implore you not to misinterpret it.

Last night I watched a documentary called Hitler's Private World (see part 1 here). It made me horribly uncomfortable. Not because it revealed what a monster he was. I already knew that bit, and was enormously comfortable with it. I was happy to think of Adolf Hitler as a terse, inconsiderate man. If I thought about his personal relationships at all, it was to assume that he was cold and distant. Unfeeling. A psychopath, even.

I was not prepared to see him as warm and affectionate. I was not prepared to see him as someone who adored children. I was not prepared to see him as someone who cared about the environment. Someone who saw the potential for user-generated content.

I was happy only to know that he was responsible for the mass slaughter of umpteen million so-called undesirables (Jews, Soviet PoWs, Gypsies/Romanies, Poles, left wing political prisoners, homosexuals, the disabled, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholic clergy, eastern European intellectuals, etc.) and then to welsh out of facing up to the consequences of his appalling actions by taking his own life.

Don't get me wrong... the documentary was not a pro-Hitler rant, and I am not about to join the ranks of those who think he was 'just misunderstood'.

The documentary was made using home movie material overdubbed with dialogue as ascertained by automated lipreading technology. It showed Hitler flirting with Eva Braun, gossipping about the likes of Goering and Himmler, playing happily with children, affectionately commending young soldiers.

It forced me to see additional dimensions to a man I prefer to think of in only one dimension... and it made me very squirm because, as the narrator pointed out, if this man had the capacity to care about the things I care about, to interact with people as I do, then perhaps he is not as different from me as I would prefer to think. On some subconscious level, I think I had ascribed him to a different species, but material such as was shown last night forces me to acknowledge that this is not the case.

Here was a man who grieved to see trees being chopped down. A man who wanted every German family to have a cine camera to record history from their own perspective. A man who could not bring himself to eat the flesh of a living creature. A man who adored children... something which showed plainly on his face as he interacted with them. A man who patted the young members of the Hitler youth with what seemed to be genuine affection as he inspected their ranks. A man frustrated by the effects of Parkinson's disease.

In some of the footage, perhaps with the help of the suggestive voice of the narrator, it was possible to see him psyching himself up, putting on the role of the orator at the hands of a (Jewish, as irony would have it) spin doctor.

Where was the monster?

Of course, his monstrous legacy remains and speaks for itself, but in his private life, he was disturbingly ordinary. I am struggling to find space in my mind for this new information.

I encourage you to watch the footage yourself. I'd be interested to hear how you respond to it.

Things my Granny knew

Have you heard this story? It's probably an urban legend, but it amply demonstrates a point:

A new husband was adoringly watching his young wife cook the Sunday roast. He noticed that she cut a slice off the end of the roast and carefully placed it on top of the joint before popping it into the oven. He asked her why she did that. His wife looked at him in puzzlement and said, "That's how you cook a roast. That's what my Mom always does." The young man expressed surprise, explaining that he had never seen it done that way before (he carefully did not say that his own mother didn't do it that way). The wife gave it some thought and realised that she had no idea why her Mom did it that way, just that it was what she did.

So she phoned her mother.

The mother explained that that was how one cooked a roast. Her own mother had always done it that way. "But why?" asked her daughter. The mother realised she didn't know the answer to this question, just that this was how it was done.

So she phoned her mother.

The grandmother was puzzled for a moment. She had no recollection of doing any such thing and could see no reason why anyone would handle a roast in this way. But as they spoke, the middle aged woman and her elderly mother, the light dawned. "Oh!" explained the old lady, "I remember! I had five children, so I had to buy a big joint. The problem was that I had a rather small oven and a small roasting pan, and the joint was too long to fit, so I used to take a slice off the end and put it on top. But, goodness! As soon as I got a bigger oven, I stopped doing that."

So there are times when we do things a certain way because 'this is the way its always been done', without stopping to question whether this is the best way.

But there are some things my Granny knew.

I still make tea the way my Granny taught me. As the eldest grandchild, it fell to me to make the morning tea when the family was all together in the holidays. I was well-schooled. You use fresh water every time - you don't just reboil the water that's in the kettle. You use a fairly large teapot, to give the tea space to move. You heat the teapot before using it. You put the tea into the pot before adding the water - you do NOT add the tea to the already poured water. And, when you pour the water into the teapot, it must be absolutely boiling - it must not have been allowed even a moment to go off the boil. Tea can be served with or without milk (note: NOT cream) and sugar or lemon. The one rule I break is that I use mugs instead of cups... only because I like a generous portion of tea. My ludicrously small kitchen does, however, include a few teacups, although I regret they are not paper-thin porcelain.

People who take real pleasure in a cup of tea - usually those of advanced years - often remark that I make a 'nice cup of tea'. My Granny would be proud.

I checked. There are reasons for each of those steps, and they still apply.

My Gran also boiled eggs in a specific way... and I have only just learned why. She used to bring the water to boil in a saucepan, then she would add a generous amount of salt, and gently pop the (room temperature) egg(s) into the water. If she was boiling more than one egg, she would write numbers on the eggs with a pencil and place them into the water in numerical order, and remove them in the same order.

I did what the two younger ladies in my first story failed to do. I thought about it and could see no reason to do it this way. I found my own way to boil eggs to my liking.

I keep my eggs in the fridge, because we eat fewer of them nowadays than in my Gran's day, and so need to store them there to keep them fresh. Taking an egg from the fridge and putting it into boiling water is a sure-fire way of cracking the shell. Now the salt in the water is supposed to help congeal the white, so that it does little more than bulge out a bit from the crack. But I have found that all this can be avoided if you just pop the egg into cold water with salt, and then bring it to the boil. Once it has come to the boil, 3 minutes will give you a soft yolk and 5 a hard yolk. Job done.

But wait. There's a thing my Gran used to do with boiled eggs when she was preparing finger snacks that involved the eggs being cut in half lengthwise, the yolks being removed and mixed with a few other ingredients and then piped back into the egg whites. Apparently (and this is the bit I only learned when speaking to my aunt during my recent trip back to South Africa), if you put the egg into already boiling water, the yolk stays in the middle of the egg! I have to confess that my yolks are seldom, if ever, in the middle of the egg, which has meant that my attempts to make my Gran's egg thingy have always looked somewhat amateurish.

But now that I know... just you wait until the next time I am asked to prepare finger food for a church do! I shall produce a perfect batch of my Gran's egg snacks... and even though she's been gone for 23 years, I shall no doubt shed a sentimental little tear as I picture her approving smile at my efforts.

Some things my Granny just knew.

Twitter v IM: a micro-reflection

Donald Clark shared via his Facebook status that "while 7 out of 10 teens use social networking websites like Facebook, only 1 in 12 teens use Twitter - Pew Internet and American Life Project - survey middle of last year 12-17 year olds."

I located said report and found it interesting reading. You might, too, if your life includes teenagers.

One caveat I found quite telling was that "the question wording for teens is quite different from how the question was posed to adults so the results are not strictly comparable."

That said, it seems that only 8% of online American teens use Twitter, while the figure for adults is 19%. It should be noted, however, that the figure for adults varies hugely across different age bands, showing a steady decline from the 37% of 18-24 year olds to just 4% of those over the age 65. So it seems that between their 17th and 18th birthdays, American teenagers experience the sudden urge to make the shift to Twitter. I wonder why? The report suggests that it "may be partially due to our question wording capturing status updates on social networking sites."

But enough of that, I wanted to focus on the 'only 8% of all teens' bit.

My own teenagers are avid users of instant messaging and have been for several years, now. Their usage patterns would not be supported by Twitter.

For example:

• They use a lot of emoticons
• They use extensive font formatting
• They frequently use more than 140 characters per message
• They conduct huge numbers of 1:1 conversations simultaneously, sharing private thoughts they would never dream of sharing in a single, multi-user stream (connected in parallel, rather than in series?)
• They change their user names often, using these as a mini status to reflect their mood, their (frequently) changing romantic status or a significant event in their lives
• They use web cams as part of their conversations (and some parents would be appalled to know some of the uses to which their teenagers put these cameras!)

Of course, this is just a single snapshot, based on my observations of my own sons and their friends, and does not constitute research. But I throw my snapshot into the pool to be aggregated with the rest of the fragments.

Graeme Duncan suggests (on Donald's FB page) "My hypothesis is kids use these media as communication tools but like it to be network building and relationship building. Twitter is a broadcast media not a two way communication channel whilst FB, MSN, etc etc are profile builders and also communication channels."

I have to say that I use Twitter to engage in conversations with people. Many of my messages start with @someone-or-other. But Donald has a view on that, too, to wit: "Spot on Graeme - Twitter is boomeresque (new word!) in that it plays to our need to either receive or transmit, not share and engage in dialogue. Even on Facebook, we're the exception to the rule -far too many boomers simply post their own entries and don't respond - you two [that would be Graeme and me] are very much the exceptions."

I'm trying to decide whether to forgive him for calling me a "boomer". I'm too young for that label, and he should know it ;o)

A fragmented conversation.

I confess, last night was my first conscious exposure to #lrnchat on Twitter. The theme was online learning myths. Jane Hart has captured the event nicely with this post.

It is quite a challenge to capture a cogent thought in just 140 characters! Fortunately a myth can usually be expressed quite succinctly.

Next week's theme is confessions of trainers and learners. That might be less conducive to brevity.

It's worth noting that I came to know about #lrnchat via Jane's Facebook status. It was updating with her contributions to the conversation and Donald Clark and I began to respond to her updates on Facebook. Jane invited us to join the conversation on Twitter. I did, briefly, between the various things and people that clamour for my attention of an evening.

This ties in with a question Wendy Wickham asked on Facebook about blogging:

"Question for the long-time edubloggers - is it just me or are we all getting quieter? How frequently are you posting these days?"

• My response was: "I don't blog as much as I used to. The conversation appears to have moved elsewhere... like here [Facebook], for instance!"
• Harold Jarche's response included: "Maybe life-streaming is replacing blogging for some people, but it's still a key part of my online professional communications and learning."
• Stephen Downes (after pointing out that he wasn't getting any quieter, which is true) observed: "a lot of the 'connector posts' (I link to you, you link to me, we form a chain of conversation) have moved to Twitter and Facebook, etc. Still a lot of good blog posts out there, a lot of good commentary, but they aren't tightly linked the way they used to be."

One thing I've noticed is that threads of the same conversation run through a variety of spaces. As happened with the whole lrnchat thing, I come across fragments of a conversation in one space and follow the trail to where the main body is taking place. Once there, I find and follow links to all manner of tendrils in a host of other places.

Sometimes the links are to contributions I would not have related to the subject at hand (in fact it is unlikely that the original contributor would have done so, either, in some cases), until the connection was identified by another participant. In those situations, it's a little like looking at one of those optical illusion images and only being able to see one perspective, until someone says, "No look. That's her cheek there, and that's a feather in her hair. And she's kind of looking away from you..." Suddenly it all becomes clear and you have an "Ooooh, yeah - I see it now" moment.

But the conversation is everywhere. In all the spaces at once. If I were to suddenly stop twittering or facebooking or reading blogs, I feel as if I would stand to lose a valuable strand. So, even though I have been quieter here than in the past, I feel no less engaged in the conversation.

What is your observation?

Internet addiction and mental illness

The free London paper ran a front page article today on the relationship between Internet addiction and mental illness, as researched by Dr Catriona Morrison.

If people are addicted, it can affect a person’s ability to perform at work or they may be failing to do chores so they can go online.’

However, she admitted more work needed to be done to establish whether addiction or mental illness comes first.

We all know that it is possible to become addicted to things that are otherwise pretty harmless, even healthy. But once things have reached addiction levels, it is a different matter entirely. I once saw a man selling his own children's toys on the pavement in order to get money for the next bottle. In the throes of addiction, people will contravene even their own codes of decency.

The thing is, when you're addicted to something, the only option seems to be a complete break. An alcoholic will never have the control necessary to become an occasional social drinker.

So what hope is there for an Internet addict? Cutting off all usage of the Internet would be akin to a voluntary imposition of illiteracy and near-hermitage.

Is a puzzlement.

First Life - a different take

Listening to a Training Magazine Network recording of Allison Rossett talking about what e-learning is and isn't, I came across this YouTube video. Good for a chortle.



Have you considered First Life for your business meetings, yet? ;o)

Twenty years ago today

It was on this day in 1990 that President FW de Klerk announced the decision to release Nelson Mandela from prison. His actual release date was 11 February 1990. So, once the decision had been announced, the wheels of bureaucracy moved comparatively quickly.

During the next few years, the apartheid regime was systematically dismantled in South Africa and, in 1993, Mandela and de Klerk jointly received the Noble Peace Prize in recognition of the role they had played in this process.

On 27 April 1994, the first fully democratic election took place in the country. For the first time, every adult in the country had the right to vote. 20 million South Africans exercised this right. Many of them standing patiently for hours due to the logistical delays in rural areas.

Not a drop of blood was shed.

It is poignant to realise that Nelson Mandela was voting for the very first time in the election that saw him become President.

On not being 'the type'

I overheard a conversation today between two members of the sales staff at a sporting goods shop. They were discussing someone who wore one of those ankle tag doodads and were expressing their surprise and disbelief. This person was apparently not 'the type'. Too old, too fit and too respectable looking, it seemed.

I was a little surprised to realise that they were talking about me.

Apparently, one of the sales assistants had briefly spotted - from under the fitting room door - the weight strapped around my left ankle, and leapt to conclusions. How odd that in a sporting goods store, their first thought would be ASBOs, rather than fitness! After all, I'm fairly sure that they sell these things there.

Perhaps it's because I only wear one (in attempt to address the fact that my right leg is visibly more muscular and better toned than my left).

I once encountered a woman on a train who was on her way back from having had her tag removed. She was very proud of this fact, and was showing her tan line to anyone who would listen. To my prejudiced eyes, she was every inch 'the type' and she got on the wrong side of me when she tried to light up a cigarette in the train carriage.

I'm very glad that I'm not 'the type'. I'm also glad that I give the impression of physical fitness and respectability. I'm less pleased that I appear to be too old to make trouble! It gets my dander up ;o)

I'm saddened for people who seem like 'the type', but who wouldn't dream of doing the sort of thing that would earn them an ankle tag. That must be quite a barrier to overcome in life.