Virtual Presentation – Ten eLearning Predictions for 2010

From a blog...but useful for interest and/or tracking purposes.

-Dave

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Virtual Presentation – Ten eLearning Predictions for 2010: "

Ten eLearning Predictions for 2010

To kick off the new year, Dr. Tony Karrer is sharing some thoughts on what's going to be happening in the world of eLearning in 2010. Back in 2006, Tony was talking about eLearning 2.0 and it's long term impact on workplace learning. What will be similar kinds of key issues that we need to be aware of in 2010?

Tony promises to deliver a fast-paced, interactive discussion that will look at trends around social and informal learning, mobile, authoring, learning management systems, and others. Come participate in what promises to be a fun session.

This event will be held via the web on Thursday January 21 from 2:45 – 4:00 Eastern. It is being hosted by the local DC Chapter of ASTD’s Technology Learning Group. If you are interested in attending, please contact Todd Slater at toddslater1@gmail.com for webinar information.

About the Presenter:

Dr. Tony Karrer is an expert on innovative uses of technology that improves human performance. He is a sought after presenter on Web 2.0’s impact on knowledge work and workplace learning. He is author of the award-winning eLearning Technology blog, creator of eLearning Learning, and founder of Work Literacy.

Dr. Karrer’s experience is diverse including initial CTO of eHarmony, associate professor of Computer Science, and consultant to Credit Suisse, Citibank, Lexus, Microsoft, Nissan, Universal, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun, Symbol Technologies and many others. He was valedictorian and attended USC as a Tau Beta Pi fellow, one of the top 30 engineers in the U.S. where he received a M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science.

Web 3.0

The following is from Harol Jarche, although I am shocked he left off Web 3.0, which is what is occuring now and will change the way we use the internet. As I have noted before, Web 1.0 is JUST starting to become common in the school, so most schools are already two steps behind where they need to have their minds for planning.

Semantic Web: The Semantic Web is an evolving development of the World Wide Web in which the meaning (semantics) of information and services on the web is defined, making it possible for the web to "understand" and satisfy the requests of people and machines to use the web content.

Friday’s Finds #31: "

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Web 2.0: A simple (working) definition. via @csessums

Web 1.0 = me

Web 2.0 = me + you

Web 1.0 = read

Web 2.0 = read + write

Web 3.0:

Web 1.0 = connecting ideas

Web 2.0 = connecting ideas + connecting people

Web 1.0 = search

Web 2.0 = recommendations of friends/others

Web 1.0 = find

Web 2.0 = share

Web 1.0 = techies rule

Web 2.0 = everybody rules

Picture: via @jalam1001

“There are NO JOBS TO GO BACK TO. Just as there was no village and rural work in 1840.” @robpatrob

Sharing tacit knowledge

This is what I am trying to address here in the Cayman Islands by introducing hybrid learning. Social learning is the only way "real knowledge" can be transferred and improved upon 90% of the time.

-Dave
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Sharing tacit knowledge: "

H.L. Mencken, American satirist, wrote that, “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” That pretty much sums up the problems we are facing today in our organizations and institutions. We are using tools that assume simple, or at most complicated, problems when many are actually complex. A mechanistic approach to problem solving is inadequate in complex adaptive environments. Global networks have made all of our work, and all of our problems, interconnected. We live in one big, unfathomable complex adaptive system.

Managing in complex systems is more about influencing possibilities rather than trying to determine any predictability. This requires tacit knowledge, or ways of thinking that cannot be codified and written up as best practices. It’s a continuous process of trying things out, sensing what happens and developing emergent practices. This is the great potential of web social media. Social networking supports emergent work practices. The true value of social networking is in sharing tacit knowledge.

What hinders the adoption of social media is that hierarchical leaders (those in power by virtue of their position, not their knowledge or ability) are not able to function when ideas and knowledge flow laterally as well as vertically. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy. Social media bypass the organization’s information gatekeepers and render hierarchical leadership useless.

Over the past century, large organizations have simplified and codified their processes in order to get economies of scale. They have also centralized as many functions as possible, including anything related to learning and performance. This is the modern institution and corporation. The problem is that this will not work any more. Biological, technological, environmental and societal change are accelerating. Moore’s Law states that computational power doubles every 18 months while human knowledge doubles every year.

Our current models for managing people, training and knowledge-sharing are insufficient for a workplace that demands emergent practices just to keep up. Formal training has only ever addressed 20% of workplace learning and this was acceptable when the work environment was merely complicated. Knowledge workers today need to connect with others to co-solve problems. Sharing tacit knowledge through conversations (the only way to do this) is an essential component of knowledge work. Social media enable adaptation (the development of emergent practices) through conversations.

In the 21st century, conversation is learning and learning is work.

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Single-media schools, multimedia world

As Dr. Scott McLeod at Iowa State University blogged about the below, it got me more motivated to make sure that hybrid learning is a part of my childrens lives. The below chart tells the picture of how we can engage learners. I would suggest that the computer (or variations of it such as streaming video to your phone/pda) will overtake TV.
- Dave

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Single-media schools, multimedia world: "

If a picture tells a thousand words, then the two images below from a recent report by the Global Information Industry Center at the University of California, San Diego are of interest. The first image shows the average American’s hourly information consumption per day. Note that the small yellow wedge represents printed text, which of course is the overwhelmingly dominant information medium in P-12 schools.

The second image shows the decreasing prevalence of printed text in our lives since 1960:

These data represent average Americans. I’m sure they would look different if we just looked at our younger generations.

It’s simple, really:

How long are American schools going to get away with these kinds of expansive disconnects between how we consume information in schools and in our daily lives?

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TU Delft Open CourseWare Seminar: The OUNL Experience

TU Delft Open CourseWare Seminar: The OUNL Experience: "

Live blogging, 10:00 AM – attendance by webinar

TUDelft University is hosting a seminar on open courseware today, mostly targeting the universities of the Netherlands. The idea is to bring together prospective and existing initiatives to discuss the challenges and the successes of OER provision.

The experience of the Open University of the Netherlands was presented by Robert Schuwer:

Started in 2006, followed by Delft in 2007. They have two institutional initiatives, OpenER and Spinoza. The OUNL is one of the fourteen universities in the Netherlands, and they focus on lifelong learning. With more than 20.000 students, they are celebrating their 25th anniversary this year.

Their aim with OER is to lower the threshold for access to formal HE, at the same time widening and increasing participation in HE in the Netherlands. They focus on offering high quality short open courses developed for self-study, what they call a ‘portal of temptation’ to higher education. They also offer the possibility to bridge informal learning and formal education, by means of official examination options. OpenEr was funded by both Hewllet Foundation and the Dutch Ministery of Education.

Figures of OpenER: the project generated a lot of media attention, attracted near 1.000.000 visitors, provided 25 courses online, 5700 users registered voluntarily, courses cost between 3.000-30.000 Euros each. The project ended formally in June 2008, but is now being incorporated to normal university activities. Approximately 10% of OpenER visitors signed up for formal courses at OUNL.

Three key best practices: Rely on quality awareness of authors (auhtorsd are already used to produce self-study materials); Support of top management (described as ‘crucial’), production of open courses should be a regular task of faculties (not dependent upon a few enthusiastic people).

Sustainability: can an OER project exist without grants? This is a challenge that all initiatives face, says Robert. At OUNL their aim is to incorporate the initiative to their business model. Each course they offer will have an OER (it may be all the course or a piece of it). They aim to be a service-oriented organisation and to offer interactive OER using different media.

Wikiwijs is a national OER initiative in the Netherlands. This national initiative was created due to the observation of the success of initiatives such as OpenER. They aim to offer school books for free and to make more appealing the ‘teaching profession’. It offers a platform where people can upload learning materials onto a repository at the same time being redirected to other existing educational materials (that they nicely call a ‘referatory’). The name of the initiative draws on the philosophy of Wikepedia, where together people create materials. Launching in Dec 2009 with the beta version, focusing on primary, secondary and community college sector. In January 2011 is the delivery of the implementation plan for the years ahead. Materials will be published under the Creative Commons License. Materials will be peer-reviewed.

Nice talk, Robert!

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The Technology Empire and the Struggle of the Educationalist

The Technology Empire and the Struggle of the Educationalist: "

11:00 AM

This morning I set myself to explore some technologies to support the upcoming OLnet virtual workshops. The OU itself offers a number of them, such as Cloudworks, Cohere and FM. These are great tools that have been used successfully by a growing number of people worldwide. Nevertheless it’s important for us to keep an eye on what the world finds interesting, and try to understand how best to make use of these tools for community enabling and to support our research purposes. In less than half an hour of what I would call a ‘very modest’ exploration, within my own social networking links, I found out three new tools. This time I didn’t even have the luxury of doing a Google search! I realised that in order to keep up with the technology available out there I would have to keep both eyes on it and not only one (excuse my Brazilian irony, I hope it makes sense lol). Just by reading some colleagues’ twitter messages and blog posts, as well as by looking at the technologies they use, I found out this whole new universe in front of me, that if I were to seriously explore, it would take at the very least the rest of my day time. Most immediately after this realisation and a quick look at the clock, I gave up searching for new technology and decided to think about how to make the best use of the tools that I already know. But is this the best option? I wondered. Maybe yes, I could get things done timely and effectively! Maybe not…. I could be missing out on better ways of doing things… and I would also be missing on the innovation side of things… the buzz tools, the buzz words, the DIM DIM, the DIGG, the Wave….

What a struggle. I concluded. And this is because I am not the most dummy of the persons when technology is concerned. Ok, I am more of an educationalist than a technologist, but even though… Perhaps the problem is not so much on ‘how’ to use the tools (at least for me), the problem nowadays is that there’s too much out there. It’s a Technology Empire.

Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing, excuse me the techie ones :-) But that this infinity of options can be rather blurring, distracting and time consuming, oh yes it can. And when it comes to OER design, use and re-use, do people actually have that much time to spend on shopping around the options? In fact, perhaps one of the biggest appeals nowadays about shopping around for technology is that it’s free: you can download and play as much as you want with the tools without digging a hole in your pocket. And pardon my rather naive comparison, but I wish make-up and shoes were available in the shops and free in the the same way … ;-)

Now, seriously, how on earth can we expect people to get grips with all that is around (even if it means two or three tools) and still produce wonderful reusable open content materials? And come up with great expertise and stories of success they can share with the world? And convince their institutions, colleagues and students that OER is a really cool thing to do? In most of the interviews with users I conducted for the past three years (teachers and general practitioners) they say something like this: “I love this technology, I really do. I think it is clever and could be really useful. But I sincerely do not have the time to invest in learning how to use it.” And they not rarely add “There’s a sea of options out there, I do not know what to choose and I do not even know where to get started. It’s a pity but it’s reality”. They are not alone. What to say next?

I still do not have a conclusion for my technology matter. It seems I am going round in circles, both counciously trying to get out of the technology trap (I like your term ‘trap’ Patrick) at the same time fascinated by the options these digital era gives me. And to give you an insider view, potential virtual workshop participants seem to prefer to use their own technology (they also develop cool things in their countries, you know?). So I wrote to my colleagues on Facebook, Twitter, Ning, Orkut, MySpace, Skype and Messenger (have I forgotten anything?) and asked for their help; I asked them to suggest me some interesting virtual learning environments and social networking websites that could make great mediation tools to our virtual workshops, something they would like to use. Some of them sent me some total unfamiliar (to me of course), really cool stuff they say, something we could never do without, all open source…. I must try them out… mustn’t I?

I need an aggregator, now I got it! I finally got the inspiration I was after, it only took me a blog post and it came my way. I am off to look for one now. Hum? The virtual workshops? The OER stuff? I think they can wait a little longer, I have something more important to do right now…

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PKM – start small

PKM – start small: "

Tony Karrer responded to my question yesterday on what aspects of PKM I should consider for the LearnTrends conference:

Harold – my question is what organizations should be doing around this? What skill building?

The challenge is that it’s personal and quite different based on roles. Going around and coaching seems too expensive.

How do you begin to move an organization forward?

I still think that the easiest way to share knowledge is to make visible some of what we already do, without adding extra work or effort. Pretty well anyone with a personal computer saves web sites to their Favorites/Bookmarks. Changing that simple annotation process to something that can be shared is relatively easy. I’ve explained it before in Free Your Bookmarks.

If an organization or department decided to put everyone’s bookmarks into a social application it would make for a large repository of links. There may be some effort in going through these bookmarks and adding more descriptive tags but it could be spaced over a period of time. The department responsible could then look at all of these bookmarks, which might be on a variety of systems (e.g. delicious, diigo) and bring them together with RSS and publish them to a central web page. The page could include a visual tag cloud for easier searching. This is an example of the role of connecting & communicating that I advocate for the training department of the 21st century. [Note to self: Diigo looks to be much more collaborative than Delicious, and I have to test it out some more].

It’s doubtful that everyone will be good at sharing bookmarks that are relevant, annotated and appropriately tagged. I think that in a large enough group some people will shine at this and, once again, the leaders of the initiative should support them. The examples provided by peers will have more chance of influencing workplace behaviour than rules and regulations from above, so allow methods to develop over time. The early adopters of social bookmarking may become facilitators for some of the other knowledge sharing activities I’ve previously suggested (and I haven’t even mentioned twitter):

Aggregate

Converse

Reflect

However, in organizations where there is little history of online collaboration, I would wait a while before initiating these. For a lot of workers and organizations, the leap to online social bookmarks will be big enough.

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