Vietnam Assistive Technology: August 2006

Thursday, August 31, 2006

Perspective in Blogs (or how Guy Kawasaki almost ruined my blogging experience)

The other day I ran across Guy Kawasaki's Signum sine tinnitu blog. I've always enjoyed Guy's speaking so I spent some time on his blog (really good stuff), but then I ran across The First 100 Days: Observations of a Nouveau Blogger where he says:

The more a blogger uses the pronoun “I,” the less he has to say. Many
bloggers apparently believe that people not only give a shiitake about
everything they say, but that these people are hanging on to every word.

If you notice my first paragraph (which is fairly standard in my blog) it contains four "I"s. Uh oh. So, for a couple of days, I've been self-conscious about the number of "I"s in my blog. My experience has been a little like an experience in college when a we challenged a student who used his hands a lot to try to go through our after dinner conversation sitting on his hands. He could barely get a thought out of his head.

Damn you Guy!

The good news is that I've been able to rationalize the word "I" in blogs. Much of what I look for in other writers' blog posts is their experience and their perspective/opinion. In fact, one CEO group that I was part of drilled into your head to never give advice directly, but rather provide relevant personal experience that might help you draw your own conclusion.

In fact, I'm happy to read Guy's opinion about using the word "I" ... and his experience that people like me who use it a lot may not have much to say ... Luckily, I've come to ignore this advice ... but that's just "I" (dang if only that was grammatically correct).

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

First Time Visitor Guide

Updated 12/03/2009 ... based on 2009 Top Posts and Topics
Update 12/03/2008 ... based on 2008 2009.

It can be daunting to visit a blog for the first time. The author(s) have been writing individual articles for months or years. This is my attempt to help you get a sense of topics of my blog and find some of the more interesting past articles.

Managing your RSS Feeds - If you are considering subscribing to this blog, you might want to read this.

Blog Description

This blog covers trends in eLearning and more broadly the use of technology that aims to improve human performance. This is fairly wide ranging from traditional courseware kinds of issues to specialized kinds of tools and sites. My background includes things like being the acting CTO of eHarmony (online marriage matching based on personality profiles and controlled communication) from its launch through their $110M venture round to working on interesting eLearning and tools for companies like Lexus, HP, IBM, etc. Thus, the blog has a tendency to jump into a wide range of technology types and solutions. I do generally focus from a corporate standpoint (not as much in the education realm). Of course, you'll get a better sense of this as you read through various post.

Interaction

I write this blog because it helps me think through and learn about the topics I write about. Interacting with readers and other bloggers on these topics really helps to expand and/or clarify my thinking. What I want (and what most bloggers want) is for readers to engage with me. Please Leave Comment - they are very much welcome.

In fact why don't you start interacting right now by briefly introducing yourself in the comments below.

You could also engage with me via your blog and respond to Conversation Topics. I will do my best to respond to you and link to your blog. Of course, that assumes you've decided to blog. If you are still thinking about it, take a look at Top Ten Reasons To Blog and Top Ten Not to Blog.

You should also take an opportunity to link to me on LinkedIn. Read why in my post: LinkedIn Connection Approach Rethought. You might also want to look at my LinkedIn Guide for Knowledge Workers.

Topics

eLearning 2.0

Starting Point:

Practical Suggestions:

Issues:

Informal Learning

Personal Learning

Blogging

eLearning Trends

eLearning Resources

Learning Management Systems

Facebook

Work Skills and Knowledge Work and Work Literacy

SharePoint

Long Tail

Other Popular Articles

Other Topic Pages

Managing your RSS Feeds

Coming back from my vacation, I realized that I needed to go through a clean up exercise again on my RSS feeds. It turned out to work pretty well for me this time around because I have been following the advice I've seen a couple of places:

My basic strategy is:

Quarantine Folders

I create a "Trying Out" folder for each three month span. Right now I have "Trying Out - Aug. 2006" and "Trying Out - Nov. 2006". When I find a blog that looks promising, I put it into the the farther out Quarantine folder. In other words, right now I'm adding blogs to "Trying Out - Nov. 2006". Blogs that I've collected over the last three months have accumulated in Trying Out - Aug. 2006.

Whenever I review an article that is good in one of the blogs in a Quarantine folder, I mark that article as "Keep New" (I use BlogLines).

When I reach the end of the month (end of August in this case) associated with the folder, I delete all the blogs that haven't produced at least a couple Keep New articles over that time. Sure, I fudge sometimes and give them another shot (move them to the next Quarantine folder).

Sort by Priority and Visibility (not by topic)

My other folders are organized into "My Front Page" - stuff that I want to read frequently (and this happens to also be listed in my blogroll on the right). And the other folders have stuff that I read (actually skim) when I have a chance (roughly every other week). They are organized into Technology and Education, but I've found over time that the content-based organization didn't really help me and any attempt to break it down more didn't help. Instead, it's purely, do I have time to go through and do some reading.

Scanning Feeds Folder

I also subscribe to a couple of specialized scanning feeds, e.g., citations to my blog, topics of interest, etc. These go in a special folder. I check these roughly every couple of days.

Other suggestions

There's an old adage among small business CEOs that you never hear - "I fired that person too early." Generally, the tendency is to hang onto poor performs far too long. Often there's a general sense of relief among all employees once the poor performer is gone and you often hear - "Why didn't we get rid of them a while ago."

The same is true of RSS feeds. I've not experienced a case where I got rid of a feed only to see it producing great stuff after I got rid of it. Sure, it had a great article that got me interested initially. But if it hasn't produced in three months, it's not been the case that it will produce again in a few more months. Plus, if it produces something really good, you'll find it through other blogs right?

Feeds from major publications that spit out lots of posts are not worth it. If they can't parse the content down and you aren't willing to put a filter on it yourself, then don't subscribe.

That's it. Pretty simple, but seems to work well for me.

Keywords: eLearning Resources

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Harold's PKM Process

Another great post by Harold Jarche - My PKM System. His picture is a great visualization of how I personally go about Personal Learning for Learning Professionals. It's worth looking at his picture. Also, Harold says that the tools don't matter that much - I would tend to agree. It's more the discipline. But I do like the full-text search of Yahoo MyWeb for finding past stuff.

Keywords: Personal Learning, Informal Learning

PKM and Personal Learning

Interesting post by Harold Jarche on PKM and Informal Learning. His sentiments echo much of what I've been saying around Course and Courseware Fading - The Future of eLearning and Improving Personal Learning - A Continuing Challenge for Learning Professionals. I'm looking forward to seeing more and more help emerge in how we can become better at our own learning so we can turn that around and help people in our organizations become better learners.

Web 2.0 and eLearning 2.0 Start-Up Guides

Updated 2/11/2008 -

Various start-up guides/introductions to Web 2.0, Learning 2.0 and eLearning 2.0:

Keywords: eLearning 2.0, Web 2.0

Monday, August 28, 2006

Is Your eLearning Broken?

Found this video via a post by Brent Schlenker...

It makes you think.

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Why Do So Few Americans Use Mobile Internet?

Long heralded as the "next big thing" in Internet access, mobile Internet (that is to say, accessing the Net through cell phones and other non-PC devices) has yet to catch on big in the US. As of June 2006, 34.6 million US mobile phone users accessed the Web through their mobile devices, according to a recent study. That's only 16% of all American cell phone subscribers.

So why the low figure, especially since mobile Internet use in Europe and Asia is substantially higher? It's not from lack of hardware; the study found that 81% of US cell phone users have Web-capable cell phones. One explanation is that there is little incentive from mobile carriers for content providers to develop and offer original mobile content. Many users are locked into limited amount of content built into the carriers' browsers; external sites can be accessed, but typically they render poorly in a mobile format, if at all.

The most popular uses for mobile Internet access in the US are for news, weather and sports updates. Not surprisingly, users in the 18-26-year-old age bracket are the most aggressive mobile Internet users, making up nearly half the US mobile web population.

Source: eMarketer

New Orleans' Shrinking Phone Book

The phone book has been around nearly as long as the telephone itself. And with 411 and the Web, phone books sometimes seem to be an archaic and obsolete medium. But there are times when such an artifact can poignantly illustrate changing times and point the way to future trends.

Nearly a year after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, new phone books are being distributed throughout New Orleans. This year's edition, however, is notably smaller than those from previous years, reflecting the city's shrunken population. The yellow and white pages have been combined into one volume; many of the most prominent yellow page ads are for contractors, electricians and roofers, while ads for sellers of luxury goods have declined.

Currently, New Orleans holds only 45% of its pre-Katrina population of 485,000, and only 47% of homes have had electric service restored.

Source: MSNBC

Pluto No Longer a Planet

It's a dark day for fans of Pluto, the ninth and most distant planet from the sun. Or, rather, former planet.

Today, after days of debating what exactly constitutes a planet, the International Astronomical Union revoked Pluto's planetary status, saying it does not meet the new definition of a planet: "a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a ... nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit." Not to mention Pluto's oblong orbit that sometimes goes within that of Neptune.

Pluto, discovered in 1930, is now bumped to the celestial minor leagues in the category of "dwarf planets," which will include the large asteroid Ceres (which was also once considered a planet) and the newly discovered 2003 UB313 (a.k.a. Xena). It could be worse: the IAU has designated a third, even lesser category called "small solar system bodies" that covers asteroids and comets.

Source: AP (via Yahoo)

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Turner to Edit Smoking Scenes from Classic Cartoons

Perhaps nothing illustrates changing attitudes about smoking more than the recent decision by Turner Broadcasting to edit out smoking scenes from the 1,500+ classic cartoons in its catalog.

Prompted by viewer complaints, Turner will edit or modify scenes in which smoking is glamourized. Scenes showing villains smoking, however, would be left intact.

The move is not without controversy, as fans and purists contend that the smoking scenes must be appreciated in the context of the era when the cartoons were made (the 1940s through the 1960s), when smoking was far more socially acceptable. Others, though, note that the majority of those who watch these cartoons are children, who should not be given any message that smoking is "cool."

The cartoons in Turner's holdings include such favorites as Tom and Jerry, Scooby-Doo, and The Flinstones.

Source: Reuters (via AOL)

One Third of World's Population Face Water Shortages

Scientists predicted several years ago that a third of the earth's population would face water scarcity by 2025... but it appears that we have already reached that point.

Natural forces, overuse and resource mismanagement have contributed to a quarter of the world living in areas of "physical water shortage," where water simply doesn't exist. Others live in areas of "economic water shortage," in which water exist but people don't have the means to access it, either because of poverty or dysfunctional governments.

Either way, continued water shortages will have a cascade effect in the coming years as lack of water leads to reduced crop output and food production, sanitation problems and conflicts between nations.

Source: Financial Times

Monday, August 21, 2006

Are Consumers Experiencing "Tech Fatigue"?

Possible bad news for the consumer tech industry headed into the 2006 holiday season: Consumers appear to be experiencing a level of "tech fatigue," failing to embrace product updates that don't offer dramatic benefits or greater ease of use. A case in point is apparent growing frustration with iPods, especially their hard-to-replace batteries and difficulties with iTunes.

With signs pointing to a slower economy, consumers seem to be waiting for major innovations to come out of the tech sector, and are satisfied with the technologies they have that are reliable, easy to use and provide clear value.

Source: Zandl Group

Friday, August 18, 2006

Advertisers Could Triple Product Placements by 2010

The rise of DVRs that allow viewers to skip over TV commercials, combined with a growth in advertising-free media, is driving advertisers to increase the amount of product placements in TV programs. PQ Media, a marketing research firm, believes that the amount spent on product placements -- in which advertisers pay to have their products displayed and used by characters on the shows -- will rise from $2.2 billion in 2005 to $7.6 billion by 2010.

Currently, the US is the leader in product placement advertising, followed by Brazil, Australia, France and Japan. China could also become a leader in product placement advertising in the years to come as its media become more sophisticated and open.

Source: BBC

Monday, August 7, 2006

LMS Dissatisfaction on the Rise

LearningCircuits published their 2006 Survey of Learning Management Systems and one of the more interesting quotes says something about the answer to my prior question Do You WANT an LMS? Does a Learner WANT an LMS?... From the report:

Most notable, purchasers who were very satisfied with their LMS dropped
considerably in 2006, decreasing from 20.3 percent to 14.6 percent. Likewise,
purchasers who were very unsatisfied more than doubled from 3.1 percent in 2005
to 7.9 in 2006.

And this trend is likely to continue as we realize that registration, tracking and reporting (key features of an LMS) is often not something we are doing to help the learner and is especially not something we are doing to help the performer. It continues to feel like LMS Products are Two Generations Behind and that they are going to continue to make it such that Leading with an LMS - Harmful to Your Health.

Sunday, August 6, 2006

Course and Courseware Fading - The Future of eLearning

Two very good recent posts by Jay Cross and Brent Schlenker discuss the Death of Courses. If you read my blog you know that I've discussed similar themes (see Shift in eLearning from Pure Courseware towards Reference Hybrids and Start with Courseware or With the Other Stuff?) and I have the same basic feeling that there is definitely a shift going on. It's not going to be overnight, but it will echo the shift we've seen from instructor-led training towards other delivery models.

Let's be clear. Courses and Courseware are not really dead and will never die out completely. There will always be the need for self-contained learning delivered in sequence. These will cover things like compliance training, basic skills, math, etc. I believe that many courses will begin to include different kinds of interation. Collaboration will be embraced more often and in new ways. But, there will still be courses at the end of the day.

However, if we fast-foward ten years and consider what the implications are if the course model is not the dominant model of what a workplace learning and performance function provides to the organization then it begs the question: what will replace this model? And as Brent asks: "How are the job, and skills, of the instructional designer changing (what you need to know in order to be a value add)?"

I think we are only just beginning to understand how to answer these questions (see Informal Learning - Let's Get Real). And as the delivery models and delivery patterns change, we will naturally see change.

So, rather than just helping to further ask the question, let me point to some things that I think contribute to the answer.

1. Learning How to Learn

I believe that the biggest challenge right now for all workplace learning and performance professionals is Improving Personal Learning - A Continuing Challenge for Learning Professionals. Until we become expert learners ourselves, it's hard to believe that we will be in position to be able to lead the charge.

2. Shift Towards Aggregation and Information Delivery

In the Future of ISD in a World of Read/Write Web, we will shift toward being aggregators who pull together information from various sources and provide context and meaning for that information.

3. Test New Kinds of Solutions

Use reference hybrids; move to the bottom right part of learning solutions; and avoid your LMS. By far, the easiest first step is to

Put down that authoring tool and pick up a Wiki

Why a Wiki? First, it's so dang easy to create and change content. And I'm not talking about having content created by the learners, I'm still assuming you are creating the content or pointing to other web pages and providing context for that information. Even better than the ease of use is that it gets you out of the Courseware mindset and into the information/support mindset. It will allow you to have your content emerge and change over time in ways that a linear course doesn't allow. It will be searchable and likely much more useful at the point of need. This is the lowest hanging fruit right now, today, ... do it ... no really, I mean it.

Keywords: eLearning Trends

Tuesday, August 1, 2006

Experts: NE Hurricane Could Cripple Region, US Economy

Meteorologists believe that weather patterns during this hurricane season could spawn a storm that could strike the northeast coast of the US. And if that happened, the consequences would be devastating.

In a recent meeting between hurricane experts and insurance representatives, attendees heard that a hurricane of category 3 strength or higher making landfall in central New Jersey (and nearby Manhattan) could cause upwards of $200 billion in damage to some of the nation's most valuable real estate. Not to mention countless lives shattered and lost, and the colossal economic disruption caused by effectively shutting down the world's most important business center for days or even weeks.

Such a disaster would be the largest in American history -- twice as great as 9/11 and three times that of Hurricane Katrina. Some in the insurance industry concede that much of the destruction would not be covered by insurance, and speculate that the US economy might take years or even decades to recover. Worst of all, few people and municipalities in the northeastern US are prepared for a hurricane.

If warmer weather increases the likelihood of powerful hurricanes reaching the Northeast, global warming may well make them an ongoing threat, just as they are in Florida and the Gulf Coast.

Source: CBS News