e e learning

de.lic.ious and my folksonomy

i'm curious if anyone else has experienced what i experienced this morning.  as i was using the sidebar feature of the de.lic.ious extension for firefox i sensed that some of my bookmarks weren't coming up as search results.  but i knew that they were there. 

it didn't take long before i determined the problem.  in my listing of web 2.0 titles, some were tagged with "web2.0", others tagged "web-2.0", yet others tagged "web_2.0", and even a few were tagged "web20".  links to content on informal learning  was tagged either "informal-learning", "informal_learning", or "informallearning."  and it wasn't just inconsistent filling in of spaces.  did i tag the content i was looking for as "workplace learning" or "organizational learning"?  or was it "thebigquestion" or "tbq"? "learningcircuitsblog" or "lcb"?

i spent hours this morning combining and deleting tags in my de.lic.ious account.  clearly my folksonomy is getting in the way of my efficient access of my de.lic.ious links.  of course, de.lic.ious could offer a tag joining feature - mysyndicaat does this very  nicely. the renaming and deleting tools for editing your tags in de.lic.ious are quite simple to use and do help prune my burgeoning tags.  but even if they provide the solution, the problem still lies in my brain's ability to remember what tags i'm using. 

besides memory, there is also the issue of the influence of the other de.lic.ious users.  what if i tag all my content web-2.0, but everyone else uses web_2.0.  my contributions will never be seen!  so i incorporate the de.lic.ious community's favorite tags in my folksonomy.  then my friends send me links with tags that fit with their conception of the world.  but i don't have time to change them, so i just add web2.0 and web20 to my cloud.

wait, i'm right back where i started!  i'm curious.  does anyone else have problems managing their folksonomy?  or should i start attending a 12-step program for tagaholics?

Tags: folksonomies, tags, delicious, social-bookmarking

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there they go with the powerpoint thing, again!

i will admit that when i first saw tony's choice for the may big question, i was a bit surprised.  after all, it feels like we've discussed and argued the pros and cons of powerpoint as a presentation aide over and over in the past few years. 

but given the reaction to the big question, it seems to be, as tony suggests, a still hot topic. i'm in the camp of  those who say blame the user not the tool.  powerpoint allows you to create fantastic presentation support materials, but it also allows you to create really bad presentation support materials. in a comment to the home post,  tj taylor points to dick hardt's identity 2.0 presentation as great use of powerpoint and i agree (although I'm not 100% sure that it's identified that dick used powerpoint versus one of the other quality presentation tools available).

in another comment to the home post, donald clark points to the slideshare best presentations in the world contest winners.  from his comment, it's not clear if donald is just presenting information or whether he's endorsing the winners.  but in my book, the winners are fabulous visual content ebooks.  the difference between dick hardt's identity 2.0 presentation and the slidepoint contest winners is simple. dick. in fact, without dick, the identity 2.0 presentation wouldn't make any sense at all.  and thus, by slideshare's perspective, the identity 2.0 presentation is atrocious.

karen romeis points to an old post of hers on this topic for her response to the big question and she lays out great guidelines for presentations.  the theme of her guidelines is it's about the speaker, not the slides. 

clark quinn makes a statement that i think plays into our perception that we need a crutch like powerpoint to make a successful presentation.  in his post he says:

I also understand the realities of most presentation situations: that people’s attention can be distracted by someone coming in the room, by an email or text message, by a colleague’s wry comment, whatever. Having the structure of the handout and the slides helps them reconnect.

my feeling that if the audience is more interested in who's coming into the room or their email, then i'm not doing my job as a presenter.  the most memorable presentation/speech i ever saw, was when i was 16 and participating in a statewide youth-in-government program back in ohio.  on a sweltering june afternoon 30 years ago, 1200 15- and 16-year-old boys were crammed into the gymnasium at bowling green state university to listen to c. william o'neill, then chief justice of the ohio supreme court, speak on leadership.  within minutes of starting, chief justice o'neill had us so riveted to his speech, that you could have heard a pin drop in that gym.  his soft spoken, genuine words about our futures were spoken directly to each individual in that gym. he cared about me. about my future. so i listened.  i listened with every cell in my body.  i've never quite experienced anything like it sense.  and done years before powerpoint was even a twinkle in bill gates' eye.

on the other end of the spectrum, a company i worked at had a simple, yet ultimately destructive (in my mind), policy regarding presentations and powerpoint.  first, you were required to have a powerpoint "deck" (as they called it) which you would not only use in the presentation, but would send to remote participants in advance.  you also would then send the presentation to all invited participants and, if you were lucky, a list of higher ups who should be informed of your ideas.  this meant that 1) anything you were going to say had to be included in the text or the diagrams of the powerpoint deck so that everyone would get the same content and 2) you were forbidden from using transitions, animations, video, or anything else that would not be presented clearly when paper copies were made.  this meant your :"presentation" was simply you standing before the group that was unfortunately enough to not have another commitment and reading your slides to them. 

now how could anyone blame powerpoint for being the cause of that silliness.  powerpoint wasn't meant to be used as a word processor.  going back to slideshare and all the tools available to turn your powerpoint presentations into elearning the misuse and misunderstanding of presentation tools is multiplied by these tools which, for the most part are no better than the "shovel ware" that would convert textbooks or "your handouts" into a electronic course on cd or the web.  while we have successfully placed that shovelware in its rightful place in the trash, there are thousands of us who praise these new tools for converting powerpoint.  shovelware is shovelware no matter how flashy it is.

today i use some simple guidelines for my presentations:

1. if i can hand you a copy of my powerpoint slides and you can accurately tell me what i'm going to say and present, then they're not ready yet.  a good powerpoint presentation should border on being meaningless prior to its use in my presentations.
2. if i'm using text, is it there for me or for my audience?  text is there to remind me of what i want to say and then secondarily as an organizer of what i've said for my audience.
3. is there something that will emotionally move my audience?  make them laugh, remind them of something from their past, excite them about the future, surprise them to the point of being startled, something that boggles their mind, etc.  look at dick hardt's presentation again with this guideline in mind and you'll quickly understand why you were so engaged by it.
4. remember, in any given presentation, each member of my audience is capable of walking away remember three, maybe five, if i'm really good, ideas and concepts.  focus on the effective delivery of these key concepts and I'll succeed.
5. and, personally for me, i need to be able to have fun.  if i'm having fun, the it's likely my audience will walk away with a good feeling for what i had to share with them. and there's a better chance they'll retain it.

as karen romeis says in her post, it's about the speaker, not the powerpoint slides. there is no such thing as death by powerpoint.  death by a boring presenter - now that's a real problem.

if you're still puzzled about all this, give me a jingle, i'd be glad to coach you on your next presenation - at my usual hourly rate.

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presenting about blogs

last week i attended the learning consortium's conference in ontario, california.  on thursday afternoon i gave a presentation entitled expanding the reach of a blog which covers some of the data i've been collecting on the effect of the big question feature on learning circuits blog.  the session was lively with questions about the use of blogs in corporate settings, skepticism that blogs are just time sinks, and the explosion of tools and information that everyone is trying to cope with today.  i'll be summarizing some of the key points of the presentation in a post on learning circuits blog in the near future.

On friday i facilitated a hands-on workshop for people just starting to get involved in using blogs, wikis, and rss.  despite a technology snafu on the part of the organizers which had me scrambling for the first 30 minutes, the workshop went well.  all of the participants were new to anything but reading blogs.  by the end of the two hour workshop they had created their own blog and posted to it, worked extensively in a wiki, and walked away with a basic understanding of the simplicity and power of rss. 

this workshop grew out of a conversation i had with pat gallagan of astd at astd's techknowledge conference in las vegas last fall.  pat and i discussed that while there are indeed exciting possibilities that are emerging from all the new technologies that are being introduced daily, a small percentage of workplace learning professionals make up those who are truly competent in their use.  most learning professionals are still at the most fundamental levels of knowledge and skill with these tools - if that.  for those, like myself, who are adherents to moore/rogers diffusion of innovations model, this is no surprise.  these tools have been adopted by the innovators in our field, but truly wide spread adoption of blogs and wikis is yet to come.  introductory workshops for these tools are still necessary.  Thus my decision to create this workshop.

if you are interested in hosting this workshop for your company or organization, please drop me a note at eelearning at mac doc com.  i'll be glad to work with you to bring a fun and educational experience to your employees or members efforts to learn about these tools.  if you are a convention coordinator looking for pre-conference or post-conference workshops, please let me know if this sounds interesting.

Tags: blogs, wikis, rss, workshops, training, web20, train-the-trainer, instructional design

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the dark side reaches the blogosphere

while the timing tells you how far being on the news i am, imagine my surprise when, as i was sifting through my rss reader late last Sunday night working on a project due on Monday, my sleepy eyes stumbled across these four words:

death threats against bloggers

what the.....?  of course, i immediately clicked through to kathy sierra's creating passionate users to see what this was about. no, it wasn't another odd marketing technique from kathy.  it was a post announcing that she feels compelled to stop blogging because of the death threats and other heinous comments being made both to her blog and in posts on other blogs about her.

as i read the post, which she has moved off of creating passionate users and links to from there, i was in total shock.  shock that kathy has been enduring this hell for months.  shock that the outrage hasn't been louder (after all, i'm just now seeing it).  shock that one of the very best blogs in the blogosphere has been swallowed by the black hole of puerile pranks, at best, or a sociopathic stalkers in the worst case.

as i've previously written (see The Future of Media, Part 2 on Learning Circuits Blog) there are those who are predicting some dark times ahead for the internet.  perhaps, if they are correct, and i wouldn't bet against them, the anonymous threats against kathy are likely just the tip of a much larger iceberg to come.  why might i feel this way?

throughout history, whenever society was presented with new technologies, there was a ramp up time in which scammers and folks with other nefarious intentions were able to take advantage of a public yet unaware of how to identify the authentic from the fake or otherwise protect themselves.  when paper money was introduced, counterfeiters had a field day exchanging fake bills for real.  when i was a teen, the newly introduced, credit card-sized driver licenses were a  snap to fake. postal scams and telephone scams both were prevalent as those services spread to every household.  atm's and public phones had their dangers until we learned to silence the beep-boop-beep's that told the sharp eared scammer standing just out of sight that you pin is 3-2-3.

why would we think the advance of the internet isn't going to be the same or worse. most of the innovations i mention above were regulated as they were introduced.  but the internet we've created is regulated by no one. and we're proud of that.  we should be.  but let's not be naive and believe there won't be a downside to that freedom.  currently there is no way to truly verify that someone is who they say they are on the internet.  even those cryptographic "words" we have to decipher to enter a comment on this and many other blogs and websites don't keep out the spammer's robots (just look at the recent comments over there in the right sidebar and you'll see what i mean). in the discussion of tim o'reilly's blogging code of conduct, several people point out that requiring an e-mail address means nothing because there are numerous ways to get an email that doesn't identify you nor can be linked to you.  is it more anonymous for me to be "anonymous" or to be "diane armstrong"?  (even kathy suggests in her last post to her blog that she might create a fake persona to continue her blogging under.)

maybe we thought the blogosphere was a different part of the internet.  a safe haven from the ills of the world due to our collective commitment to authentic discourse and honest disagreement.  in many ways it is true. the rallying behind kathy has been much like a neighborhood watch being formed.  the blogosphere has shown it's compassion and willingness to protect it's turf.  but even neighborhood watches often can't do it all.  fortunately, organizations like sxip, openid, lid, oasis/saml, pingidentity, and others are working on solutions.  the question is, will they be just in time or a little to late to avert widespread scams?

tags: anonymity, scams, kathy-sierra, code-of-conduct, blogophere, identity, identity-management

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collective intelligence excites execs

zdnet.com's dion hinchcliffe provides a tremendous post covering various research reports regarding corporate use of web 2.0 technologies.  not only does he discuss reports by big boys forrester, gartner, and mckinsey, but he includes a dozen or so other small er reports on related topics. what comes out is that web 2.0 is slipping comfortably into the consciousness of executives despite it's continued concern about these new tools. what's catching their attention is the idea of collective intelligence.  capturing and sharing as much knowledge as possible within the organization to accelerate innovation and growth.

this post is a great resource that anyone interested in web 2.0 technologies should consider a must read.

Tags: web-2.0, enterprise-2.0, collective-intelligence

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learning futures markets

one thing i've always liked about elliott masie  is that when it comes to new gadgets and toys, he's like me.  he has to play with them now.  what's great about elliott is that he loves to share.  the latest toy he's playing with is inkling's predictive markets tool.  predictive markets are used to gauge possible future trends or reactions to new ideas or products.  participants are given a sum of money to invest in the trends, ideas, or products they believe will be successful in the future.  this simulation/game approach mimics the real world actions and reactions of groups in dynamic settings.

elliott asks "what will employees, in 2009, use as their primary tools for everyday learning in the workplace?"   today is a  listing of all the options you can invest your initial $5000 of play money in.  you purchase stocks in the technologies which you think have the best bet of being the primary tools in 2009.   but added to the mix is the economic incentive to invest in a stock that hasn't peaked in value yet.

i'm doing pretty good so far as you can see from the box to the left.  i'm currently invested in phone/mobile, on-the-job training/learning, unknown technology/techniques, and gaming and simulation.

this specific market has a few problems  like the category of eLearning, which truly encompasses many of the others.  classroom teaching really isn't much of a daily learning tool.  obviously, "unknown technology/technique" is a bit wide open.  elliott did heed the participants calls for adding cellphone/mobile technologies to the list - a glaring miss given the real world. 

there is a very lively forum regarding the market that you can participate in as well.   all in all a great group tool and lots of fun.  although I could be saying that only because i'm doing so well.   the market is open until april 1.  come on over to inklingmarkets.com and give it a try!

am i a blogger?

once again tom haskins has a post that just sends my brain a spinnin'  (fyi, that's a good thing in my book).   beware of blogging is inspiring at times and a bit depressing at times.  tom grasps the way blogging is effecting him and i think many of us as we learn a new way of learning.  he says that bloggers are shaking the foundations of what we've come to expect in regards to ourselves and the way we interact with the world.

one aspect of what he has to say that has really hit me at home is that if you are posting to a blog and no one is responding then you're really not participating in the blogosphere and thus not truly a blogger.  he feels that a blogger makes a difference when he/she creates reaction and change in those who they are in dialogue with.  without commentors, it's not blogging.

while early on I worried about counting the number of comments I got,  realized that I probably would never be one  of those bloggers who got 10 comments on every post.  heck, take a look and you'll see that I'm probably luck if I get 1 every ten posts. 

but i've come to judge whether my blogging is worthwhile by two other means.   

first and foremost, i'm learning.  in the three years that i've maintained eelearning and the two i've served as the blogmeister of learning circuits blog, i've learned more than i'd ever image i could, my writing has improved (it still needs work), and i've connected with some great people i would have never met if it weren't for blogging.

second, if i use other statistical guidelines like traffic statistics, technorati rankings and link information, or feedburner stats, i know that i have a growing collection of readers and feed monitors.  i wouldn't be in your feeds and blogrolls if you didn't value at least part of what I have to offer.

i'm sure tom overstated is case and didn't mean to exclude me or similar bloggers from his definition of what it means to be a blogger.  but his posts did make me think about what is important and what makes me consider myself a blogger.  to quote martha, "and that's a good thing."

holy blidget, batman!

widgetbox has provided the ultimate tool in grabbing the blogosphere's best imitation of warhol's fifteen minutes of fame.  in literally 3 minutes or less, you can create a blidget (i assume it's short for blog widget ) which features the latest posts from your blog.

what's so unusual about that? you're right, nearly every blogging software allows you to do that.  and most rss readers have some means of helping you render any blog's content on your site.

but a blidget also lets you author a widget that is ready made for anyone coming to widgetbox can load up to their website like any widget.  check it out.  mine is over there in the right sidebar where my "recent posts" list used to be.  or you can check it out for uploading to your computer either in the widgetbox catalog. or by clicking the button below my recent posts blidget.

make our garden grow

konrad glogowski recently shared his personal disappointment caused when he realized that he had been shutting down the  blog communities of his 8th grade classes each june at the end of the school year.  his post, i will be a gardner is worth reading both for what it has to say about building communities but also as an example of the power that honest introspection  conducted before the blogosphere can hold.

as the blogmeister for learning circuits blog, I've been looking at ways to nurture an online community as well.  konrad's thoughts regarding building a communal history and building the means to assure that  contributions to the community will not evaporate for some trivial reason (the end of the school year for example) are well taken.  he further says he used to think of himself as the architect of the communities his students formed but has changed his metaphor to that of a gardner.

having lived in boston, the home of urban communal gardening, i think the metaphor of gardening is a apt one. 

konrad's points are well taken.  when leading or seeking to build a community it's important to let the individuals explore the topic(s) at hand freely and openly.  but at least as importantly, they must be able to explore their own growth path as a member of the community.

konrad's thoughts jive well with a great blog post i recently stumbled upon by bud gibson on the community engine entitled high octane blogging — how to form business community.  gibson sets out three dynamic components he describes as vital to building a vibrant community.

• creating an information space where participants can see each other as well as other related information from outside the community.
• giving participants their own soapbox where they can say what they want and getting them to say it.
• giving participants feedback so that they know what they are writing is having an impact.

while they are a bit broad in nature, i think we're seeing evidence in conversations around The Big Question feature at LCB.  (more no that in a post on LCB soon.)  add to this list, konrad's emphasis on archiving a communal history and I think you have a solid set of guidelines for community building.

I'll close with the lyrics from the finale of bernstein's classic opera, candide, which see quite apropo.

We're neither pure, nor wise, nor good
We'll do the best we know.
We'll build our house and chop our wood
And make our garden grow.
And make our garden grow!

the redmond-centric world spins on

“The challenge … is how we can adapt to all these issues without incurring fundamental change in the institution of higher education as we know it today.” ― Gerald A. Heeger, in College Planning & Management

i found this quote at the top of a page entitled "challenges for institutions" in a powerpoint presentation developed by microsoft for partners to use in selling vista to educators.  while i'm not sure what specific issues mr. heeger was referring to, it is clear from the powerpoint deck that microsoft is discussing issues of collaboration, access to information, learner driven learning, etc.  interesting that their tact is to assure colleges and universities that they can "adapt to all these issues without incurring fundamental change."

sheesh!, just when you think they might finally be paying attention they prove that they still think the world needs to adapt to the microsoft view of the world.