I have always been a big fan of the digital pen technology and have witnessed the growth of this market over the past 8 years with the release of such products as the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen and PaperShow for Teachers. Using a digital pen and digital paper makes the solutions come alive and are a ,natural for students and teachers to use since very little training is required. One of the solutions which I believe could have tremendous impact on how teachers and school administrators capture data in the schools could come about by using digital pen and paper solutions.
Over the past few years, I spend part of December going back through my blog to recap a bit of what some of the key things I’ve learned over the course of the year. I’ve been doing this the past few years, for example: Learned about Learning in 2009. And every year I use this as a Big Question – see: Learning 2010. A lot of it is thinking through where my thinking has changed over the course of the year. So here are a few of the things that are a bit different for me.
I used to say during presentations that I wasn’t quite sure about twitter as a learning tool. During 2010, I’ve been ramping up my use of twitter as a learning tool. I’ve had to find ways to filter the flow and figure out when/how to reach out. It was definitely helpful to spend time going through Twitter for Learning – 55 Great Articles.
In 2010, I had a great experience where Dr. Joel Harband wrote a series of articles for my blog on Text-to-Speech in eLearning. Here’s the series:
But what I learned from this was that it was a fantastic way to learn about a topic where I was interested but didn’t have the time to spend researching it. Instead, Joel would write it up. I’d ask questions and edit it.
It provided high value for me and hopefully value for people reading it.
I’m looking forward to doing more of this going forward. Please let me know if you want to be a Learning Coach for me on another topic.
I didn’t actually think that I would care about the iPad except as a tool for training and performance support in environments like retail and restaurants where it’s always been an issue having access to machines. However, now that I have an iPad myself, I’ve found myself sitting on the couch with it a LOT. And slowly it’s got me to try more applications and then those applications expand off to my iPhone.
It’s an amazing device and no surprise it was one of the breakout topics on eLearning Learning this year.
While LMS solutions continue to get better, more powerful, more diverse, I continue to find myself searching for just the right solution for particular needs. For example my search for an LMS Solution for Simple Partner Compliance Training didn’t really arrive at just the right solution. I was also struggling for clients who needed very simple learning tracking but with some customizations. Marketplace LMS solutions don’t quite fit. Neither do more complex solutions.
And a big part of the problem is just how many there are and how fast they change.
eLearning Learning has somewhat become my singular source of great eLearning content. I use it to filter and find all the best content on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. And it’s going to become much better in the new year as it moves over to the next generation platform. I was really glad to see it grow to become one of the Top eLearning Sites. And the system itself is growing with sites like Social Media Informer.
This year I spent quite a bit of time looking at where and how open content could get leveraged in different ways. I’m still struggling a little bit with it, but I know there’s going to be a lot going on around it. See Failure of Creative Commons Licenses and Creative Commons Use in For-Profit Company eLearning? for more on this.
2010 opened my eyes are Flash and HTML 5. I really think that 2010 marks the Beginning of Long Slow Death of Flash. This, of course, means some really big changes for authoring tools in the industry.
As part of this exercise, I went back to look at my top posts and hottest topics for the year via eLearning Learning. What I wrote more about in 2010 than past years:
And here were my top posts based on social signals.
onmode -wm NS_CACHE="host=900,service=900,user=0,group=900"
onmode -wm NS_CACHE="host=900,service=900,user=900,group=900"
onmode -wm NS_CACHE="host=900,service=900,user=0,group=900"
onmode -wm NS_CACHE="host=900,service=900,user=900,group=900"
I just read George Siemens post Will online lectures destroy universities? He makes the point that despite articles like Why free online lectures will destroy universities – unless they get their act together fast:
Statements like “universities are obsolete” or “universities are dying” are comical. And untrue. Universities are continuing to grow in enrolment and general influence in society. Calling universities obsolete while we are early on in the so-called knowledge economy is like declaring factories obsolete in the 18th century just as the industrial revolution was taking hold. Utter nonsense.
While George does talk about challenges in education, I think he misses part of the point of the article. And this is something that I’ve been thinking (and writing – see Physics Lectures) about for a long time. Here’s the point:
As the article points out:
At the same time, millions of learners around the world are watching world-class lectures online about every subject imaginable, from fractional reserve banking to moral philosophy to pharmacology, supplied by Harvard, MIT, and The Open University.
Have you seen Planet Earth or watched a Professor Lewin physics presentation? There’s basically no way to compete with those sources. And wouldn’t it be better to get the best available lecture with local discussion, studying, testing, etc.?
I’m not quite sure that I buy the article’s contention that:
The simple fact is that university lectures never worked that well in the first place – it’s just that for centuries, we didn’t have any better option for transmitting information. In fact, the success of top universities, both now and historically, is in spite of lectures, not because of it.
Maybe that’s because I’ve learned a lot in schools that way. But even if you keep lectures, but you open up everyone to the Best Lecture available on a given topic … The implications here for education are profound.
I also believe the implications here are profound for corporate training. We can continue to hide behind the myth that our content is special and different. Some of the time, that’s quite true. But there’s a lot of content (leadership, management, safety, etc.) that really should not be replicated by every organization.
Instead, we should be looking for the Best Lecture and work our specifics around that. Of course, that’s sometimes made harder because despite the Open Content movement in education, there’s less of a movement in corporate learning (and some barriers: Open Content in Workplace Learning?, Creative Commons Use in For-Profit Company eLearning?).
What’s also interesting about this situation is that there are similar barriers from the content creators standpoint. In the Business of Learning, I talk about the challenges as a content creator and how the business models might work. And every day, I’m talking with people who have great content and could be creating the Best Lecture on a topic. And while they can easily capture it, getting it distributed in a way that pays is difficult. Instead, they need to package it into a unit that is self-contained. They need something similar to an LMS or a course that runs in a corporate LMS. But it certainly won’t look like a Best Lecture model with corporate eLearning professionals being able to act like local discussion, studying, testing.
I’m not sure what any of this will look like in education or in corporate training – but I am sure it will be quite different in 20 years from how we do it today.
/*
This simple function returns an integer to the calling SQL code with the following meaning:
0 - We're not within a transaction
1 - We're inside an implicit transaction
2 - We're inside an explicit (BEGIN WORK...) transaction
-1 - Something unexpected happened!
*/
#include <milib.h>
mi_integer get_transaction_state_c( MI_FPARAM *fp)
{
mi_integer i,ret;
i=mi_transaction_state();
switch(i)
{
case MI_NO_XACT:
ret=0;
break;
case MI_IMPLICIT_XACT:
ret=1;
break;
case MI_EXPLICIT_XACT:
ret=2;
break;
default:
ret=-1;
}
return (ret);
}
include $(INFORMIXDIR)/incl/dbdk/makeinc.linux
MI_INCL = $(INFORMIXDIR)/incl
CFLAGS = -DMI_SERVBUILD $(CC_PIC) -I$(MI_INCL)/public $(COPTS)
LINKFLAGS = $(SHLIBLFLAG) $(SYMFLAG)
all: get_transaction_state.so
clean:
rm -f get_transaction_state.so get_transaction_state_c.o
get_transaction_state_c.o: get_transaction_state_c.c
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) -o $@ -c $?
get_transaction_state.so: get_transaction_state_c.o
$(SHLIBLOD) $(LINKFLAGS) -o $@ $?
The two commands run are the translation of the macros/variables defined in the makefile(s) and they simply compile the source code (1st command) and then generate the dynamic loadable library. If all goes well (as it naturally happened in the output above), we'll have a library on this location, ready for usage by Informix:
cheetah@pacman.onlinedomus.net:informix-> make
cc -DMI_SERVBUILD -fpic -I/usr/informix/srvr1150uc7/incl/public -g -o get_transaction_state_c.o -c get_transaction_state_c.c
gcc -shared -Bsymbolic -o get_transaction_state.so get_transaction_state_c.o
cheetah@pacman.onlinedomus.net:informix->
cheetah@pacman.onlinedomus.net:informix-> ls -lia *.so
267913 -rwxrwxr-x 1 informix informix 5639 Nov 23 22:06 get_transaction_state.so
cheetah@pacman.onlinedomus.net:informix-> file *.so
get_transaction_state.so: ELF 32-bit LSB shared object, Intel 80386, version 1 (GNU/Linux), dynamically linked, not stripped
cheetah@pacman.onlinedomus.net:informix->
cheetah@pacman.onlinedomus.net:informix-> ls *.sql
get_transaction_state_c.sql
cheetah@pacman.onlinedomus.net:informix-> cat get_transaction_state_c.sql
DROP FUNCTION get_transaction_state_c;
CREATE FUNCTION get_transaction_state_c () RETURNING INTEGER
EXTERNAL NAME '/home/informix/udr_tests/get_transaction_state/get_transaction_state.so'
LANGUAGE C;
cheetah@pacman.onlinedomus.net:informix->
cheetah@pacman.onlinedomus.net:informix-> dbaccess stores get_transaction_state_c.sql
Database selected.
674: Routine (get_transaction_state_c) can not be resolved.
111: ISAM error: no record found.
Error in line 1
Near character position 36
Routine created.
Database closed.
cheetah@pacman.onlinedomus.net:informix->
cheetah@pacman.onlinedomus.net:informix-> dbaccess stores -
Database selected.
> EXECUTE FUNCTION get_transaction_state_c();
(expression)
0
1 row(s) retrieved.
> BEGIN WORK;
Started transaction.
> EXECUTE FUNCTION get_transaction_state_c();
(expression)
2
1 row(s) retrieved.
> ROLLBACK WORK;
Transaction rolled back.
> EXECUTE FUNCTION get_transaction_state_c();
(expression)
0
1 row(s) retrieved.
>
If you notice it, the first execution returns "0". Since I have not done any operations there is no transaction opened. But just after a simple SELECT, the return is "1", meaning an implicit transaction is opened. This has to do with the nature and behavior of ANSI mode databases.
cheetah@pacman.onlinedomus.net:informix-> dbaccess stores_ansi -
Database selected.
> EXECUTE FUNCTION get_transaction_state_c();
(expression)
0
1 row(s) retrieved.
> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM systables;
(count(*))
83
1 row(s) retrieved.
> EXECUTE FUNCTION get_transaction_state_c();
(expression)
1
1 row(s) retrieved.
>
/*
This simple function returns an integer to the calling SQL code with the following meaning:
0 - We're not within a transaction
1 - We're inside an implicit transaction
2 - We're inside an explicit (BEGIN WORK...) transaction
-1 - Something unexpected happened!
*/
#include <milib.h>
mi_integer get_transaction_state_c( MI_FPARAM *fp)
{
mi_integer i,ret;
i=mi_transaction_state();
switch(i)
{
case MI_NO_XACT:
ret=0;
break;
case MI_IMPLICIT_XACT:
ret=1;
break;
case MI_EXPLICIT_XACT:
ret=2;
break;
default:
ret=-1;
}
return (ret);
}
include $(INFORMIXDIR)/incl/dbdk/makeinc.linux
MI_INCL = $(INFORMIXDIR)/incl
CFLAGS = -DMI_SERVBUILD $(CC_PIC) -I$(MI_INCL)/public $(COPTS)
LINKFLAGS = $(SHLIBLFLAG) $(SYMFLAG)
all: get_transaction_state.so
clean:
rm -f get_transaction_state.so get_transaction_state_c.o
get_transaction_state_c.o: get_transaction_state_c.c
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) -o $@ -c $?
get_transaction_state.so: get_transaction_state_c.o
$(SHLIBLOD) $(LINKFLAGS) -o $@ $?
Os dois comandos executados são a tradução dos macros/variáveis definidos no(s) makefiles(s), e apenas compilam o código fonte (primeiro comando) e depois geram a biblioteca dinâmica. Se tudo correr bem (como naturalmente aconteceu no output acima), teremos a biblioteca nesta localização, pronta a ser usada pelo Informix:
cheetah@pacman.onlinedomus.net:informix-> make
cc -DMI_SERVBUILD -fpic -I/usr/informix/srvr1150uc7/incl/public -g -o get_transaction_state_c.o -c get_transaction_state_c.c
gcc -shared -Bsymbolic -o get_transaction_state.so get_transaction_state_c.o
cheetah@pacman.onlinedomus.net:informix->
cheetah@pacman.onlinedomus.net:informix-> ls -lia *.so
267913 -rwxrwxr-x 1 informix informix 5639 Nov 23 22:06 get_transaction_state.so
cheetah@pacman.onlinedomus.net:informix-> file *.so
get_transaction_state.so: ELF 32-bit LSB shared object, Intel 80386, version 1 (GNU/Linux), dynamically linked, not stripped
cheetah@pacman.onlinedomus.net:informix->
cheetah@pacman.onlinedomus.net:informix-> ls *.sql
get_transaction_state_c.sql
cheetah@pacman.onlinedomus.net:informix-> cat get_transaction_state_c.sql
DROP FUNCTION get_transaction_state_c;
CREATE FUNCTION get_transaction_state_c () RETURNING INTEGER
EXTERNAL NAME '/home/informix/udr_tests/get_transaction_state/get_transaction_state.so'
LANGUAGE C;
cheetah@pacman.onlinedomus.net:informix->
cheetah@pacman.onlinedomus.net:informix-> dbaccess stores get_transaction_state_c.sql
Database selected.
674: Routine (get_transaction_state_c) can not be resolved.
111: ISAM error: no record found.
Error in line 1
Near character position 36
Routine created.
Database closed.
cheetah@pacman.onlinedomus.net:informix->
cheetah@pacman.onlinedomus.net:informix-> dbaccess stores -
Database selected.
> EXECUTE FUNCTION get_transaction_state_c();
(expression)
0
1 row(s) retrieved.
> BEGIN WORK;
Started transaction.
> EXECUTE FUNCTION get_transaction_state_c();
(expression)
2
1 row(s) retrieved.
> ROLLBACK WORK;
Transaction rolled back.
> EXECUTE FUNCTION get_transaction_state_c();
(expression)
0
1 row(s) retrieved.
>
Se reparar, a primeira execução retornou "0". Como ainda não tinha efectuado nenhuma operação não havia transacção aberta. Mas logo a seguir a um simples SELECT já retorna "1", o que significa que uma transacção implícita estava aberta. Isto prende-se com a natureza e comportamento das bases de dados em modo ANSI.
cheetah@pacman.onlinedomus.net:informix-> dbaccess stores_ansi -
Database selected.
> EXECUTE FUNCTION get_transaction_state_c();
(expression)
0
1 row(s) retrieved.
> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM systables;
(count(*))
83
1 row(s) retrieved.
> EXECUTE FUNCTION get_transaction_state_c();
(expression)
1
1 row(s) retrieved.
>
