Acer Aspire Netbook Now Available

While I attended NECC 2008 the theme was smallness and portability. In this tradition Acer just recently released the Acer Aspire Netbook computer a 2.2 lb. ultra-portable net computer with the following specifications-see below. Looking at the newspaper circulars Circuit City has it on sale for $379 dollars. I'm holding off purchasing one for the work that I do until I see what Dell has up their sleeves. I would still prefer to have a netbook running Windows XP. These can certainly be ideal tools for some of the students that I work with who need a computer for note taking and organization. Click here for a review.

• 1.6GHz Atom N270 Processor
• 8GB solid state hard drive, 512MB DDR2 SDRAM (expandable)
• 802.11b/g, Ethernet, three USB 2.0, VGA, and 3.5mm audio out
• 1.3 megapixel camera, SDHC and multi-format media readers
• Linpus Linux Lite operating system

Check out this early video review of the Acer Aspire from JkontheRun

bCisive for Decision Making

Many of you may not know this about me, but in my previous life, I was a practicing school psychologist and worked with many students to help them develop better social problem solving and decision making skills. I even went on to write two parenting books on emotional intelligence and have been interested in this area for the better part of my professional career. As a practitioner, I would carefully break down the skills that the students needed to learn and I would often help them see the consequences for their actions by using flow charts or doing it them in Inspiration, a really fantastic concept mapping application. Trying to make the handouts and materials very visual and showing the students I worked with the decision making process was in the long run going to help them make better decisions.

The idea of visualizing the outcomes is very powerful and if I had some of the tools that I now have I know my work would have been that much easier. Regardless if you are a student or a business person we are always confronted with having to make literally hundreds of decisions each and everyday. Some of the decisions we make are made effortlessly without much deliberation, however there are always those few decisions that gnaw at us and force us to sit down, ponder, and evaluate. It is for the former, that having visual tools like bCisive can come in really handy. Before I talk about bCisive, I do want to thank Katherine Brandenberger from Austhink Software for providing me with a copy of bCisive, to review. Austhink Software promotes bCisive as a simple software application for business decision making and diagramming that goes beyond mind mapping. bCisive runs on Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 2000.

bCisive has a very clean and pleasing interface to navigate and provides the user with the now familiar Ribbon interface. The Left panel provides the user with all of the symbols that can be used to build your decision tree, while the right panel provides you with the Text Panel. The Text Panel allows you to do Internet searches right within the application using Google and Wikipedia as well as searching for images using Flickr and Google. You can also use the Text Panel as a Scratch pad for your ideas or use it to attach Notes to an idea in your decision tree. Within the Text Panel you can also view a Summary of your decision making as well as an outline- which are two really powerful features. The user can also export the outline into a word processor for further editing or revision.

I decided to do a test run of bCisive working through a decision to take traditional courses or on-line courses for a Supervisor's Certificate. I started out building my decision tree by using the Basic Map template provided and dragging it into the middle of the screen. This provided me with a number of specific icons that I could now enter text into. I was now able to type my question as well as my options and the pro's and con's of each option. This was very straight forward and having the visuals laid out on the screen does make you go through the process more systematically documenting your thoughts and ideas. Once I worked through the process I was able to select my decision and code it using the decision icon. The process was very quick and straight forward. If I needed to have supporting materials, I could have attached files and URL links to my decision tree.

bCisive really shines when you are ready to share your decision processes with others. You can always Export your Outline to a text file to email to others or output your decision tree as an Image file (png, jpeg, bmp, tiff, and emf, and gif). One of the really exciting output features is being able to export your bCisive decision tree as a bMap Bundle. The bMap Bundle creates a zip file with all of your attachments and URL's and creates an html file with all accompanying media so that you can upload it to the web (Click here to view the bCisive map on the web) or share it with anyone who has access to a browser. Once you open up the bMap Bundle you can interact with your decision tree and look at the steps and process you took in coming to your decision. bCisive is a very specialized tool for all types of open ended decision making. It provides a very engaging environment in which to think about and clarify the options as well as the pro's and con's of your decisions in a very systematic fashion. I particularly liked the fact that the program automatically generated a summary of your decision. While I know this program is geared for business people, this could be an extremely invaluable tool for those professionals who work with students to help them look more carefully at the decisions they make and the consequences of their actions. Providing individuals with a structured visual approach to making better decisions is such and important support when students are in the process of having to decide on what to do. So if you have the chance, take a look at bCisive- there is a 30 day trial version available.

YouTube on Your Blackberry

For those of you with Blackberry phones who need to access YouTube it is very easy to do. Just open your browser and type in m.youtube.com. Now select your favorite YouTube video and watch it come to life on your Blackberry. I had a chance to play some of my screencasts that are on YouTube on my Blackberry Curve and while the picture is small I was impressed with the image and the audio quality. So go ahead and enjoy YouTube on your Blackberry

Dimdim 4.0 Released

FYI- I have written before about Dimdim, a free web conferencing Web 2.0 application that just keeps getting better and better. Here is the latest news about Dimdim

Exciting Dimdim News

Hello. We wanted you to be the first to know that we're launching a brand new version of Dimdim.

Since we launched our first public beta in April, Dimdim has been used in 180 countries by over 500,000 people. And we've made Dimdim even better by adding over 60 new customer-requested features including: Recording: You can now record your meetings and share playback URLs or embed the recording directly onto your own website just like YouTube videos. Multiple Presenters: With a single click you can allow any attendee to share their presentation, whiteboard, webcam - even their desktop. Mac Desktop Sharing: Mac users can share their desktop with anyone using just a browser. Free Teleconferencing: While we've improved our free VoIP microphone sharing everyone now gets their own unlimited free conference call account. Private Meetings: Simply assign a meeting key and only those who know both your meeting room name and your meeting key will be able to join. No Install: Now you don't need to install anything to join or even host a meeting. You'll only need to install our screencasting plug-in if you choose to share your desktop. Best of all, you do not need to do anything to get these new features as all Dimdim accounts have already been upgraded. Just sign in to use Dimdim 4.0 today. Take some credit for helping us make Dimdim even better: tell your friends to sign up for the new Dimdim and let them know these new features were your idea. We'll vouch for you.

Help us by telling everyone that the easy, open, and affordable web meeting is now even better at Dimdim.com. And breathe easy knowing that Dimdim users have saved millions of dollars and thousands of tons of CO2 by meeting virtually instead of commuting. Thank you for helping make Dimdim - and the world - better. Sincerely, Steve Chazin Chief Marketing Officer

DevLearn

DevLearn is coming up. I just took a quick look on the eLearningGuild site and DevLearnis looking good again this year. My guess is that I'll be getting together with a few folks there to have a drink and discuss things like eLearning 2.0 (yeah, we know how to have fun).

Quite a few of the speakers are straight out of my blog roll, so I'm looking forward to seeing them.

• Clive on Learning
• Learnlets
• Corporate eLearning Strategies and Development
• e-Clippings (blogoehlert)
• Will at Work Learning
• SCORM Watch
• eLearning Weekly
• Michelle Lentz
• Mark Chrisman
  
• Lance Dublin - an honorary blogger

I'm sure I'm missing some folks. But, as a reader of this blog, you should drop a comment if you are going to DevLearn and I'll try to let you know when we are getting together. In the past, this has been quite a bit of fun (see DevLearn - Beer - Who's In? - And Where?, Boston - Beer - Bloggers - Learn.com and Beer Tasting at ASTD TechKnowledge). Including having Adobe and Learn.com sponsor events in the past. Maybe someone will want to do something similar. Maybe Tuesday night?

Or maybe we can get Michelle Lentz to figure out a place for wine?

One thing that they've kept from last year are the breakfast bytes. These were informal opportunities to discuss topics. I attended one with Will at Work Learning and it was quite an interesting discussion. Almost a beer and bloggers type discussion, but with coffee and a bit more structure.

Looking forward to seeing folks at DevLearn. Oh, by the way, I'm doing two sessions:

• The Learning 2.0 Symposium
• Work Literacy - A Key to eLearning 2.0 Success

So, drop me a note if you are going.

Delicious Upgrade Only Skin Deep

I personally think delicious is a great tool and I often describe it's use in presentations and workshops. It recently went through an upgrade that improved the look and performance. However, it interestingly left out a lot of what I said was missing in my post - Yahoo MyWeb better than del.icio.us, rollyo, et.al. for Personal and Group Learning from March 16, 2006.

My claim back then was the Yahoo MyWeb has some features that made it better for a lot of corporate users, and while I hate to argue for its use, the fact that two years later after Yahoo acquired del.icio.us (delicious), they've not addressed these issues is a surprise.

What were the issues I cited back in 2006?

1. Searching within the contents of my bookmarked pages
2. Page caching (so I don't lose the pages I've bookmarked)
3. Control on sharing of bookmarks (private, friends or public)
4. Categories of Friends (so I can have family, work, etc.)
5. Web Badge for Integration into my Blog

Okay, so they've addressed (a while ago) item #5. But that's really the least of the items. When you think about what knowledge workers need relative to Keep / Organize / Refind / Remind, I've discussed in The New Skills that we want to be able to keep track of everything we've seen with minimum effort. If users can't do a full-text search across their pages (or if they might lose them), then this violates this rule. Further, if they don't feel comfortable making certain saved pages public, then this also will hinder adoption.

Yahoo has so many issues these days, you'd think when there are obvious, high value features, they would attack them.

Maybe in another two years, they will do something more than skin deep.

Memorizing Facts

Brain 2.0 has sparked some very interesting discussion and quite a bit of disagreement. My basic claim is that technology changes what is considered

In Does new technology reduce the need to memorise facts? Mark Frank rightly argues:

We remember things better if we elaborate on them – and there is much more scope for elaboration if you already know a lot.

The point is that knowing facts is one of the best tools for accessing and using other facts.

I don't think anyone disagrees with that. You need to attach information to other information in order to be able to recall. And you need some way to recall or bring in anything that you want to process. Creating attachment is incredibly important.

Mark in many ways get rights to the crux of the issue with his suggestion that the key question is what are the necessary facts that students (or anyone) needs to learn. And this is an age-old and likely never solved debate. As part of his argument he tells us:

There is long-standing debate as to what facts are necessary (e.g. how much history should children know?) but that has little to do with new technology and is largely a matter of values.

Now this is where I believe it gets very interesting. I believe that technology does have impact on what will be considered "necessary facts."

As a trivial example, consider the impact that cell phones have had on memorizing phone numbers. One study has shown that people over 50 have significantly better recall of important dates, phone numbers, etc. than people under 30. Why remember something that is immediately accessible in a usable form (ready to be dialed) when needed?

From my comments, in the post:

My belief is that there's a finite amount of learning time that students have. You have to make choices about what to spend your time on. And truly with access to very rich, easily accessible information sources, some time is wasted on needless facts. My earlier post on Life is an Open Book Test test talks to this. We test all the time closed book, but that's not reality. And especially now. So there's some balance that's needed. But my belief right now is that we are tending to stick with what we all accept as the right stuff to test just because that's how all of us learned and we think it represents important base knowledge.

Going back to the question of knowing the population of England in 1800, I actually think it would be far more valuable to know the paradigm that population (which can be easily accessed by doing X) compared to something like the population of London (urbanization) and/or the number of people who died in a war or by disease (net impact, is this important) are interesting questions to know to ask. Unfortunately, while that may have been the point the professor was making in my class - it certainly was not the emphasis. By the way, I couldn't tell you the population of the U.S. (my home country which I theoretically have studied in far more detail) in 1800, nor do I have any sense if urbanization was more or less in the US, etc.

The question at hand - doesn't having quick (almost immediate) access to the definition and details of concepts like urbanization, populations, state capitals, change the set of facts we define as necessary?