Friday, August 30, 2002

How to support informal learning. Stephen Downes comments on the same article about learning communities ...The article correctly identifies the need for online learning communities as a means of capturing the informal or tacit knowledge that circulates within an organization or group. But then, like most accounts of online learning communities, it describes a fairly structured or formal approach to their creation, so much so that the resulting product would resemble a classroom much more than a community... ...I think there are two major things to remember, things that dictate a very different approach than is recommended here. First, informal learning is informal, so don't try to structure it with roles and behaviours. Second, informal learning is not separate, but rather, integrated into day-to-day activities. The learning is a part of and a natural outgrowth of other activities. Putting it into a nice formalized box somewhere separate from everything else simply ruins it... Something to add to my question about "can we support informal learning". Supporting often means formalizing... [Mathemagenic] For me, supporting informal learning largely means making it easier for people to find and pull whatever knowledge they need at a given time. It means giving them the freedom to select the ways that suit them. It means providing a varied array of powerful tools, but not forcing any particular one on them. Putting a learner in a wagon on a predefined track is not the way to go. Sadly that's what they still do in schools everywhere. That's the price to be paid for maintaining (a semblance of) order. [Seb's Open Research] 7:29:00 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

The Approaching Age of Virtual Nations. Virtual nations (v-nations) are online masses of individuals, unified by a common cause or ideology, that mirror real nations in the inclusion of and progression toward leadership, laws, power, security, monetary systems, and other elements. They will act as both a threat to and a hope for global resource allocation, cooperation, and security. [via KMPings] [Seb's Open Research] 7:26:21 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

Blogging for Reputation. Small Business Blogging. Rereading Bricklin's Aug 12 article on small business blogging, I realized that his first example is a pretty close fit for the intangibles I get from doing this blog: One type of small business is the "consultant". This covers a wide range of areas, from engineers, to marketers, to event planners, to freelance writers and designers, and more. Consultants are already very common users of blogs. A normal part of the job of many consultants entails going to meetings and conferences and being active in trade associations where they "network", show off their expertise, appear on panels, etc. A blog is a way of showing your expertise and establishing yourself as a trustworthy authority without doing the travel. The time necessary to maintain the blog comes out of the time that would have been spent at some of the meetings. (A blog is an excellent way to build up your "authority" to move up politically in a trade association, too. Your readers would be others in your field, not customers.) [Radio Free Blogistan] [Seb's Open Research] 7:19:09 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

Research on Collaboration in Research. A nice page on publications related to collaboration networks in the research world, a subject close to my heart. Check out in particular Mark Newman's recent publications and Valdis Krebs' Erdõs graph page which points to Barabasi's recent mathematical analysis of the Evolution of the social network of scientific collaborations (pdf). Most of the work in this area seems a little too quantitatively dry for my tastes, but interesting nonetheless. [Seb's Open Research] 7:13:13 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

The necessity of self-critical thinking. Confirmation bias. "Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for nonsmart reasons." —Michael Shermer, Sept. 2002 Scientific American When you believe something, you tend to prefer facts that confirm your belief, but ignore or rationalize anything that contradicts it. The smarter you are, the better you are at rationalizing whatever you want to believe. Is there a way for a smart person to escape this self-made trap? Maybe. As a passing statement made in his controversial book On Aggression, Konrad Lorenz suggested that a scientist should begin each day by throwing out one of his pet theories, just to stay sharp. The point seems to be that if you get used to giving up things you hold close to your heart, you won't feel instantly compelled to resist something that'd pull the bad ones away. [Disenchanted Dictionary] Reminds me I should take the time to carefully reread this critical thinking piece. [Seb's Open Research] 6:59:14 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

Joel on Software - Platforms. Joel on Software - Platforms. "One of the biggest themes in software industry failures is a platform vendor that didn't understand that they were a platform vendor, so they alienated their key consituency: the developers." [Not so Groovy? Maybe.] [Archipelago] 6:51:36 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

Random blogs worth another look. Down left side of [follow me here] is definition of Weblogging with powerful links. Here's another photography enthusiast. http://www.staceygraham.com/ I like the icons here illustrating each of the topics. http://www.wanderlost.org/ramble/ Here is someone experimenting with Radio theme redesign and advising others on the topic.  http://mrp.peircecentral.com/lcweblog/  I like the mixed photo array across the top.  This individual has both learned how to import images, and layout around them in an eye-appealing way. I love [Pamela Joy] general layout and clicking on various windows of house.  She now has a tutorial on how to do this kind of ODP editing thing. Thursday topics: Artistic sites; Computer Security; Humor; Links; Politics.  I also updated some stories and categories (access my collection via Radio url number system).  The indigestion problem seems to have largely passed, and now I just feel a little dizzy. [Al Macintyre's Radio Weblog] 10:48:58 AM    trackback []     Articulate []

eLearning Blog. Yet another Groove related weblog popped up. KC Bolton started a blog dedicated to eLearning for the 21st century. They will be launching some Groovebased solutions for educational purposes soon. [Jeroen Bekkers' Groove Weblog] 10:33:13 AM    trackback []     Articulate []

CMSs in e-learning. elearningpost has interviewed Bob Boiko, author of the Content Management Bible, on the role of content management in e-learning. Here... [Column Two] 10:30:16 AM    trackback []     Articulate []

Usability testing resource. The Usability SIG has provided a Usability Toolkit, which is a collection of forms, checklists and other documents for conducting... [Column Two] 10:29:55 AM    trackback []     Articulate []

Australia's growth industries in the knowledge economy. The Department of the Parliamentary Library has released a research note on the growth of specific industry sectors in Australia,... [Column Two] 10:28:37 AM    trackback []     Articulate []