I was watching a silly video on Viddler that was mildly related to learning and I stumbled upon The Schools We Need – a presentation Chris Lehmann from the Science Leadership Academy gave at Ignite Philly 2 in September. Ignite Philly gives you 20 slides and 5 minutes to talk about something. Chris chose to talk about our responsibility to technology in our school systems. It’s a great 5 minutes and notable for the content as well as the format.
cross-posted from bub.blicio.us
I opted to cross-post this item because it’s not only interesting for looking at your future employees, but also, your future trainees.
Every year Beloit College prepares the Mindset List,
which provides the worldview of the incoming freshmen. Most of those
freshmen were born in 1990, which rather blows my mind, and they will
graduate college (ideally) in 2012. The mindset list is almost freakish
- I can’t believe some of these references.
The list is great
at making you feel old, but it’s also fantastic for looking at those
folks who will be your employees in about 4 years or so. From that
perspective, a mindset list isn’t a bad idea.There are 60 items on the list; I thought I’d share just a couple.
4. GPS satellite navigation systems have always been available.
17. Club Med resorts have always been places to take the whole family.
18. WWW has never stood for World Wide Wrestling.
22. Clarence Thomas has always sat on the Supreme Court.
28. IBM has never made typewriters.
33. The Tonight Show has always been hosted by Jay Leno and started at 11:35 EST.
34. Pee-Wee has never been in his playhouse during the day.
51. The Windows 3.0 operating system made IBM PCs user-friendly the year they were born.
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Cheers!
Find Michelle Lentz here on Write Technology, on Twitter, Pownce, and FriendFeed.
If you work in eLearning at all, or you want to learn more about how to integrate new Web 2.0 technologies into your workplace, I’ve got a seminar for you. Plus, it’s amazingly inexpensive.
Dr. Tony Karrer, CEO of TechEmpower, and author of at least two learning-related blogs, is running a seminar on July 15 here in Cincinnati. The seminar is sponsored by the Greater Cincinnati ASTD chapter, but you don’t have to be a member to participate.
Attendees of the workshop will
Tony is an expert on innovative uses of technology that improves human performance. He is a sought after presenter on eLearning 2.0 and it’s implications on workplace learning. He is the author of the award winning eLearning Technology blog and recently founded Work Literacy.
The workshop will be held at the NKU METS Center in Erlanger Kentucky. Breakfast and networking will be from 8am-9am. The workshop begins at 9am.
The cost for the workshop is $129 for GCASTD Members and $179 for Non-Members. The price includes breakfast, lunch and GCASTD membership for Non-Members.
For more information or to register for the event, visit the GCASTD web site.
Cheers!
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Find Michelle Lentz here on Write Technology, on Twitter, or on Pownce.
Note: This is cross-posted from bub.blicio.us, where I posted it first, and then decided to share here as well.
image by Darren Hester thru Creative Commons
There’s a lot of discussion happening right now about Nick Carr’s controversial article in The Atlantic Monthly: Is Google Making Us Stupid?
In addition to Carr, there are other voices chiming in, including Maggie Jackson (Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age) and Rick Shenkman (Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter). I heard these two speak, in particular about how the Information Age is really an "ignorant age" on the Diane Rehm show on Tuesday.
I take issue. I think we’re getting smarter.
I work a lot in instructional design and eLearning. The world of adult learning is changing. We learn faster and can take in more types of information – we have access to more types of information. It’s a fascinating time to work in the industry.
There’s a buzzphrase you hear now at all the eLearning conferences: informal learning. I call it watercooler learning. People have all this information about their jobs tucked away inside their heads. With Web 2.0 tools and content sharing, we can not only get people to share that information, we’ve got people willing to teach each other in an informal setting. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to tap that previously hidden knowledge.
There is a lot of reference in the article, and in other supporting articles, to a lack of picking up a book and reading. I still read. In fact, I try to devour a new work of fiction every other weekend. It’s an escape mechanism for me. I will never stop loving the feel of the traditional, paper-bound book. No Kindle for me, thanks. I want to smell musty pages and turn the crunchy paper. I love it. I can’t imagine wanting to read less. I would go so far as to say that I now have easier access to things like the NY Times Book Review, as well as Amazon.com, which I wouldn’t have without the Internet. Those two sites, in particular, often guide me to new books.
Is my attention span shorter? I don’t know if it was ever long. Growing up, Sesame Street (you know, the TV) was my babysitter. I’m of the TV generation – I don’t know life without it and it was the dominant technology of my youth. Do I now skim web pages to grab relevant information? Yes! Because I’m smart enough to be able to pull out the relevant information. If an article really grabs me, I’ll read the whole thing. Do I twitter constantly? Yes! But it has actually improved my technical writing, helping me better condense relevant information into short concise sentences. Not everything you read needs to be lovely prose, after all. Not only that, Twitter has introduced me to a whole community of people, many of whom I’ve gone out of my way to meet in person and then carry on in-person, intelligent communication.
I don’t disagree that there is now a plethora of information out there. For the last two weeks I’ve only managed about one post a day on this blog because I’m suffering from a bit of information overload – or maybe information fatigue. I’m almost bored with the idea that there is a new startup every day. You’ve got to really dazzle me now, I guess. But times like this ebb and flow. Whether my mind is a bit jaded or not does not mean that "Google" has made me stupid. It means I need to work harder at separating the signal from the noise.
I’m a big fan of Steven Johnson’s Everything Bad is Good for You. I honestly believe that the strategic thinking employed in video games is a useful type of learning. I believe that honing my research skills both in a library and online is a good use of my time. And I believe that although we are learning differently now, and parsing information differently, that difference isn’t a bad thing. It’s evolution of information, and thinking. And I enjoy it.
I want to close with a quote from Stephen Downes on Stephen’s Web, in reference to the Carr article:
Sigh. My response is very simple. I read constantly. I write constantly. I also work in images and multimedia. If Google is making me stupid, then I am forced to conclude that without Google I would have been some kind of super Einstein or something.
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Find Michelle Lentz here on Write Technology, on Twitter, or on Pownce.
Twitter is already being used in academia. I think we could easily adapt some of those uses for the corporate training room.
ChitChat: Students may continue the conversations outside of class using Twitter. This is especially important when the class is spread out via elearning. The students have a shared experience – your classroom. This conversation and experience now continue outside, the same as with a wiki, yet with less effort.
Connection with VIPs: You can follow the big names. For instance, when it comes to Web 2.0, I follow Geoff Livingston, Chris Brogan, Brian Solis, and Jason Falls, amongst others. What is often surprising to me is when they follow me back. Twitter flattens the org chart. Your CEO can twitter and in the process, chat with employees that also Twitter. Suddenly, everyone is just a Twitterer. It’s a great way to learn from the experts or access the executive tier.
Question and Answer: Twitter can provide instant feedback. It’s great for question and answer. Recently, Geoff Livingston was guest lecturing at University of Maryland. He asked Twitter – what advice would you give students for graduation? He received tons of responses, live, which were shared with his students instantly. Another Twitterer once demonstrated the power of instant feedback by asking Twitterers to call him on his cell phone while he was giving a presentation. The constant flow of calls was so much he had to beg folks to stop calling him. His point was well proven. This can also be used with GroupTweet to pick a specific distribution list for your question tweets.
Twitter Tracking: I actually have a few issues with this one. I don’t use Twitter on my phone very much. I set up phone notifications for a few folks for one month, and it was too much. Not being 22 or younger, I don’t like getting constant text messages. Maybe I just need an unlimited texting plan. So now I just get Direct Messages only via text. Twitter Tracking is a cool feature that needs to be expanded to the Web. Currently, you can send Track Instructional Design (for example) to Twitter via SMS and you will recieve an update whenever someone tweets using the phrase "instructional design." You get the update via your phone. The concept of tracking, however, is fantastic. Want to know what’s up with the latest iPhone update? Track iPhone. To turn it off, simply send "Untrack iPhone" via SMS. A nifty web-optimized replacement tool for Twitter Tracking is TweetScan.
For education, Twitter Tracking (even through TweetScan) could be used to track instances of language use, specific conferences, and so forth.
Note Taking/Sharing: You can ping specific tweets/thoughts as Notes using TwitterNotes. You can then share the notes with the world – or with your class.
I’m using Twitter so much that I thought it was high time I explored how it might be used professionally within a learning environment.
Microblogging (whether Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, or something that isn’t here yet) has endless possibilities for the classroom. How much can you do in 140 characters? A lot, it would seem. The #1 advantage to microblogging is that it breaks boundaries – you are no longer confined to a computer and can explore the world. Twitter (et al) allows you to use any number of third party programs or simple text messaging on your mobile phone, no matter where you are.
Here’s a video from the Chronicle of Higher Education that I found via Brightcove. Tomorrow I’ll post on other uses I’ve found for applying Twitter for learning.
I believe that software simulations are a huge part of the future of
corporate training. Used in conjunction with a guru-blog or a
department or company wiki, a simulation will complete and fulfill a
lot of technical training needs. They can also be created in short bursts, making
them quick to study and easily accessible, delivering information when
and if the user needs it.
When I attended the ASTD TechKnowledge conference last month, there were several products on the floor that attracted my attention. I’ve already told you about Veotag, which brings video to life. Now I want to talk about KnowledgePlanet’s Firefly.
Firefly is perhaps the best software simulation tool I’ve seen. It’s deep simulation, completely immersing your user in the environment. It’s very real – so real it’s hard to tell whether you’re in training, or the actual software product on which you’re training. That realistic touch makes Firefly extremely effective.
On top of that, when we sat through the demonstration of the product, Firefly seemed extremely easy to use. Have you used Captivate? Then you’ll have little problem with Firefly. In fact, Captivate is probably their biggest competitor, if only due to distribution channels, and there’s really no comparison.
There was one problem. When I finally mustered up the courage to ask how much a license would cost, I was given an unrealistic answer. I believe they said $10K. I’m lucky I remained standing. It makes other elearning software I think is overpriced suddenly seem inexpensive. I was crushed by the price tag and walked away shocked and sad.
Apparently, I’m not the only one who had that same shocked and sad experience. But here’s the crazy thing – Knowledge Planet paid attention. They are now offering a slightly scaled down but FREE version of their product…
Tired of hearing the various generational terms thrown around? It does get old, and I admit to being terribly guilty of the offense. Everything from Generation X, Millenials, Digital Natives, Gen Y, they all make it into this blog.
A great Wikipedia entry on the Silent Generation (those born in the 1900s or 2000s) offers a fantastic chart on the generation name game, starting with the Puritan Generation in the 1500s and continuing through the New Silent Generation in the 2000s. It’s worth a look.
(Via Boing Boing)
Technorati Tags: generation X, generation Y, generations, millenials, digital natives
In the last 6 months I’ve attended two conferences: ASTD TechKnowledge and Elliot Masie’s Learning 2006. Despite some overlap in speakers, these were vastly different conferences. While I enjoyed and benefited from attending both, I think I learned more at Masie’s conference, and here’s why.
Elliot gave his speakers strict rules – no presentations and only a 1-page handout. (Granted, several speakers squished as much as possible onto the front and back of the handout.) You could see that several speakers were uncomfortable with this format, apparently wishing they had a PowerPoint presentation to hide behind. In most sessions, however, this setup forced discussion. The speaker was more of a facilitator in many cases, and discussion involved anyone who wanted to speak up. It was a fantastic way to get people actively involved in their learning.
Today I’ll post Tufte‘s presentation tips. He provided tips not only on how to lead a successful presentation, but how to evaluate a presentation. I need to point out that Tufte feels that PowerPoint is the epitome of everything wrong with presentations today. Just read his article "PowerPoint is Evil" in the September 2003 issue of Wired.
Presentation Tips
