Cathy Moore points to a study of PowerPoint animations which Cathy says makes the (obvious) point:
…flying bullet points are not only annoying and gratuitous, they’re so annoying and gratuitous that they distract from the content. This isn’t a surprise.
Cathy’s asks why to use PowerPoint for e-learning at all when simply presenting information (why not just a pdf?). She says save the animation for realistic interactions in e-learning.
The recent article on “folksonomies” by Alexis Wichowski in First Monday, a free online peer-reviewed journal, points the way. It presents the history of folksonomies in the context of the growth of information technologies, and looks at how they are regarded in the academic community. Alexis sees “the emergence of folksonomies as a “forced move”, arising as a necessary adaptation for the survival — the findability — of useful information amidst a changing environment.” Folksonomies don’t replace more stable and traditional methods of classification of information, but add another layer.
Tim explains, “In answering the question [the Google team] re-imagined email and instant-messaging in a connected world, a world in which messages no longer need to be sent from one place to another, but could become a conversation in the cloud. Effectively, a message (a wave) is a shared communications space with elements drawn from email, instant messaging, social networking, and even wikis.”
Read the rest of Tim O’Reilly’s long post on the implications of Wave. There are big changes in Internet communications coming fast. (GW)
“Tom Kuhlmann writes about designing e-learning courses using a pull approach vs. a push approach. Ideally, it’d be nice to be able to pull information from any source than just pulling from the content provided. This is kind of BIG P pull and little p pull. You can pull content but you’re still within a course structure that has been pushed to you, there’s a little pull. Unless structure is definitely needed a much more engaging option to traditional push methods of content delivery.”
Quoting Michelle, Ellen wrote:
Good performers won’t perform well if they don’t know what to do, or don’t have the stamina to do what is needed. You would never try to run a 10K race without preparing for it, would you? Well, you would NEVER send your best sales team out to work with customers if they weren’t ready for prime time!
Ellen concludes with this:
Any one of us whose work supports more effective training – or education, or performance support – also needs to model that same pursuit of excellence that we expect from those in training, those that we purport to serve and support. Well, we do if we want to be contenders.
Sound advice.
Clive Shepherd posted his own ‘Ten Commandments of E-Learning (content design)”. Great reading. What would you add? What are your “Ten Commandments?”
“We are preparing students for jobs that don’t exist yet”
An important quote from the famous Did you know? video (version 3.0) which illustrates the reality shaped by technology and other factors that command a paradigm shift in education.
This post – Measuring Networked (or Social) Learning - discusses how we could go about measuring social learning. I’m not sure I buy how much real impact any of this will have on bottom line measures. The recent MIT Study that showed that more highly networked individuals were more productive (see Workplace Productivity). So, size and access of networks might be a proxy, but what about all the rest of these suggested measures. Do we really believe they will be proxies for effectiveness?
If you suddenly find yourself with time to kill, or smitten with a strong urge to explore emerging technologies, Robin Good has posted a detailed mindmap of Best Collaboration Tools 2009. Even those who are well versed in collaboration software will be hard pressed to not find at least a few tools they haven’t encountered before…
This article reflects on the human element of informal learning. The author defines five key human roles in an informal learning strategy: subject matter expert, role model, mentor, coach, and peer learning partner. You can read about each role more in depth on her site.
To breathe life into our informal learning strategies, we need to work on building a culture in our organizations where these roles will flourish. Sharing expertise and collaborating with others needs to be encouraged, recognized, and rewarded. Reaching out to others for support of learning needs to be viewed as a savvy strategy for getting up to speed and getting ahead. There has to be some room for informal conversation and sharing experiences. In an economic environment where time is increasingly scarce, interpersonal interactions may be undervalued and underutilized, and that will have serious consequences on learning in our organizations. The live element of learning is something to monitor… we can’t let our enthusiasm for information-based informal learning strategies shortchange our learners with regard to the interpersonal aspects of learning.