My Twisted Brain

Well, it’s over. I’ve seen the light at the end of the tunnel, gotten to within walking distance (thanks, dad, for that one!), seen the cows come home, and put the horses to bed. My M.A. (in Education with a specialization in Instructional Technology, for those who care) is not only within my grasp, it’s IN MY HOT LITTLE HAND!

What a ride. It started two and a half years ago where I learned how to say “Hello” in Korean, and it ended up with me creating an online learning site for learners of the Thai language. Not related to my accomplishment, you say? I say NAY! They are tightly connected.  Let me share my thoughts.

Language is often a barrier to learning, especially in higher education.  My wife, who is an English language learner, is currently pursuing a degree at a Bay Area college, and must demonstrate English proficiency before proceeding on to courses related to her major.  She understands why, since a language barrier may not only affect her learning, but may affect the ability of her classmates to learn as well, as the instructor is forced to spend more time with her.  Understandable, but frustrating and time consuming.  Her need to learn English before starting to take even her basic general requirement classes will delay her graduation by two to three years.

Now, consider services like Google’s Translate.  Copy any text block into the input box, select languages to translate from and to, and BANG, เสียงดัง, חֲבָטָה, 강, you have a fairly accurate translation.  What’s to stop these types of tools from being built into Learning Management Systems (LMS)?  Set the student’s and instructors languages in the LMS learner interface, and suddenly there is two-way synchronous or asynchronous communication between the two, even though neither speaks the other’s language.

There are, no doubt, many difficulties to overcome before something like what I’ve hinted at above can come to be.  However, need it really be that far away?  It seems to me that the pieces are there.  They just need to be assembled in a viable system.  I’m certainly not the one with the skills to do so, at least not yet, but I can’t help but see the huge opportunity that we have to provide inter-lingual, cross-cultural online learning.  From the standpoint of educating those who are educationally challenged, I see the potential as world-changing.

Perhaps my next degree will be taught by someone in Africa who speaks only Swahili…any programmers out there up to the challenge?

I finally got my invitation to join up with Google Voice a couple of weeks ago. For those of you who aren’t aware, Google is now a phone company (well, almost). Essentially, they provide you with a phone number that you can configure to ring any number of telephones when someone calls that number. It also includes voicemail, cheap long distance (including international), and a ton of other bells and whistles. It’s some of these bells and whistles that got me thinking about Web 3.0.

Those of you (all 1 of you…on a good day) that keep an eye on this blog may have noticed a new addition recently. If you look down below the blog roll on the right sidebar, you’ll notice a new “Call Me” widget.

Clicking it gives you a place to enter your phone number and name. When you click “Connect”, Google calls you, then calls me and announces your name, and connects the two of us together. You just called me from my blog! It will ring me on my cellphone, home phone, work phone, and whatever phones I choose to configure Google Voice with. It’s cool, and scary, and very Web 3.0 (I think).

Another feature is the voicemail transcription. When you call my Google Voice number and I don’t answer, Google Voice takes your voice message just as most phone accounts would. However, after you hang up a little magic happens. Google Voice transcribes your message into an email that it sends to my gmail account (or any other account or accounts that I specify) and sends an SMS message to my cellphone, with the text of the voice mail. I can read what you just told me in your voice mail. Very cool, and again, very Web 3.0.

As our voice and text worlds become increasingly intertwined, there are increasing opportunities, I think, for connectivist style education and collaborative experiences. We can connect with our fellow learners however we want to, and they can receive our messages however they want to. We will no longer have to leave a voicemail message because we know that Ludwig doesn’t check email very often. We’ll be able to email him a voice message that he gets as a voicemail on his phone! We will no longer have to email someone who refuses to get a cellphone, but has access to email at their neighborhood WiFi hotspot (I know someone like this, don’t laugh). We’ll be able to send their Google Voice account a voice mail, and they’ll read it within 5 minutes. The lines are blurring day by day, and the ID crowd needs to step up and take advantage of the new “mashups”.

This week’s class (April 30th…a bit late on this post) dealt loosely with interface design, but used more real-world examples to illustrate the importance of design in making things understandable and usable. It was based on a chapter in the book “The Design of Everyday Things” by Donald A. Norman. As the title suggests, the book studies the design of items that we use every day, such as coffee pots, toasters, and doors. In fact, one of Norman’s illustrations is a set of doors that he once became trapped in, due primarily to design that did not afford obvious clues to its operation. They were beautiful doors, but looking at them did not tell you the things that you need to know about doors, such as which way they swing. Most doors have things like doorknobs and hinges that tell you, “Push here, and the door will swing this way.” Norman’s doors had no such clues, which led him to push on the “hinge” side fruitlessly, leaving him trapped. The message here was that you can design the most beautiful of devices, but if you can’t figure out how to use them, how much good are they really?

I shared an example in class of the ticket dispensers used in the parking garage at San Francisco State University. They have little screens, and buttons, and slots covered by plastic doors, but unless you stop and read the (tiny) text on small placards in a darkened garage, there really are very few clues as to how they work. The other day, I stood behind a woman trying to figure it out, and finally had to assist her in feeding her $5 bill into the machine, and pushing the right button (the green one) to get her ticket. Pushing the wrong one would have gotten her a receipt for a refund of her $5 that she would have had to bring back the next day to get her cash, and she still would not have had her valid parking ticket. The controls to these boxes are very compact and clean, but almost impossible to figure out easily (and without losing your money!).

Kim mentioned three fundamental topics of designing functional and pleasing objects:

• Information - How well does the object communicate its operation to you?
• Functionality - How well does the object do what it’s supposed to do?
• Aesthetics - How inviting is the object to use?

These are all important considerations in design, but it’s important to keep in mind that an aesthetically pleasing item that does not communicate its function, or worse is not very functional at all, is fundamentally useless. Norman uses the term “affordance” to indicate how well an object communicates its use. A coffee cup that has a cylindrical cavity and a handle on one side that is the size and shape of your fingers indicates through its design what its function is. An example that Norman uses is a pair of scissors. Looking it the design of the holes on the handle end tell you something about how to hold it so that you can cut paper (or whatever you want to cut). A pair of scissors without holes might confuse the user, and would not do a good job of telling them what they’re for, although they may cut paper just fine.

Designs are also culturally linked.  You have your “Schema” based on your culture.  Some function of design may not be apparent in a different culture. Kim used an example of “chocolate” lipstick. She had taken some lipstick that had been given to her to Africa on one of her many trips. Some of the lipstick was a shade of brown that was very similar to a small, round bar of chocolate. After she handed them out to people who had never seen lipstick before, she turned around and, to her horror I’m sure, saw some of the people taking bites out of the lipstick…they thought it was some new, cool, “twist to feed” chocolate bar!

Instructional design, especially in distance learning using Web 2.0 tools, will rely more and more on good design to help learners figure out how to learn. Tools such as blogs, wikis, and Learning Management Systems (LMSs) will need to be designed with affordances in mind. There won’t always be an instructor there to explain the ins and outs of using learning tools. Designing a killer training program using Web 2.0 technology that your learners can’t figure out won’t teach anyone anything except how to be frustrated. Good design goes beyond making something compelling and beautiful. If a thing is to be useful, it’s got to be usable.

Okay, another project is in my future. Not the “biggie” mind you, but important none-the-less. I need to produce a learning project with Web 2.0 written all over it, and I think that I know what I’m going to do.

My 894 project is slated to be a collaborative learning environment for language learning (for readers who don’t understand the SFSUspeak that is ITEC894, it’s the capstone creative work project that, assuming it passes muster, will usher me into the world of the Masters). My focus will be the Thai language, but it should be adaptable to other languages as well.

Sooooooooo…

I’m thinking about making a supplemental website, based on a Wiki, that will allow learners to collaborate on learning the Thai written language.  I’m still fleshing out the design, but I’m leaning toward a Wiki design because it lends itself quite well to collatorative text learning, and seems like a natural for allowing a large, diverse group to learn a written language together.  It would also allow native speakers (I know a few in Thailand and in the U.S.) to chime in with their input as well.

This would again be a supplemental site to the core learning materials, since a Wiki is not really a full, rich learning tool.  However, given the nature of language, in many cases dynamic, and in all cases unbelievably rich and complex, I think that a dynamic environment like a Wiki would work well for this.  As complicated as the Thai written language is, there will be plenty for contributors to write, and re-write, about!

Comments?  Anyone have any ideas to punch this up a bit?

Last week some friends and I attended the Web 2.0 conference in the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. I must confess it was a bit smaller than I expected, but then it is a recession year. It also wasn’t the crazy madhouse that my last major convention experience, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), was. But there was a lot to see, and there were plenty of hungry sales folks to take up your time.

One thing that struck me was the number of social networking startups populating the aisles. Many seemed like new labels on old pants…asking the staff of booth 28b about what differentiated their social networking package from others was met with a very eloquent and verbose spiel that boiled down to, “Ours is cooler!” Having had experience with a couple of social networking mashups (with flashy categorical names like “Social Business Software packages”) sch as S. F. Bay Area based SocialText, I see the value in packaged social networking suites, but how many ways can you put together a package that has “like-Twitter”, “like-Wordpress”, “like-Wiki”, and “like-Confluence” all rolled up? In short, much of this part of our visit was somewhat of a yawn.

There were a few points of interest for me though. nomee is a social networking aggregator that puts all of the your social networking tools such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. into one online “card”. It takes this one step further by organizing it into a push, similar to RSS, which lets your followers grab that card and follow all of your social online activity at one time. All they have to do is look at your nomee card, and they know all of your Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube posting activity at a glance. I like anything that simplifies the job of keeping track of everyone’s social network activity without having to me a member of every friggin’ networking site out there!

Something else that caught my eye was (not surprisingly) another aggregator. Kapow is a company that is starting to market what they call a Mashup Server. Essentially what the server does is to run an Internet “spider” that collects information from sites that you specify, strips out the formatting, and reformats the data into a configuration that you set up. I see something like this as very interesting from more than a Web 2.0 aspect. This could also be a very important development for Web 3.0; with the ability to format a pile of Internet information any way that you please, you can take all of your favorite sites, collate all of the information in “raw” form, and format it to fit your iPhone. In an instant, you have everything that you want to know at your fingertips anywhere that you can get a signal, presorted and organized just the way you want. Between this and nomee, I can keep track of everything that I want, everywhere in the world (just about)! Pretty neat stuff!

There was lots more to see. There were a few high-Wow-factor booths (the MicroSoft Surface booth was way cool!), and some very interesting non-profit booths such as the OER Commons booth. The Open Educational Resources organization is dedicated to bringing free, open source educational resources together under one virtual roof for easy access by educators. It’s a pretty cool place (check out http://www.iskme.org for more info on this). All in all, a very interesting afternoon. I’ll be going again next year!

Okay, here’s the promised textual explosion on video games in the classroom.  My apologies up front for the meandering, but hey, as I’ve noted before, it’s my blog.  Sue me.  But first, read on!

Last Thursday our class was entertained by Dr. Joseph Kahne of Mills College in Oakland, CA.  Dr. Kahne spoke about using video games to further civic involvement by our nation’s youth.

Wow, that sounds dry.  It is also a pale description of the presentation that Dr. Kahne gave.

Dr. Kahne’s presentation was a joy to behold.  He touched on topics ranging from the importance of schools involving their students in civic activities, to the ability of games to the relationship that video games have with learning, to the perception that video games have in current society. I’m kicking myself for not recording the presentation for my own use, just to remember the richness of the information that he delivered.  I’m hoping that at least he makes his PowerPoint presentation available to us.  It would be wonderful to have it to refresh my old memory!

While the figures that he quoted were compelling, what I found refreshing was his common sense approach to video games, and how the players may and may not be affected by playing them.  Of course, as those of you who have not been stuck in the 60s are probably aware, there’s a war on between those who feel that video games are evil incarnate and those who feel that video games are an annoying waste of time at worst, and a powerful tool of instruction and expression at best.  Dr. Kahne’s presentation took this topic head on, and gave some convincing arguments in favor of the latter of the two groups.

It’s time for a little disclosure at this point.  I happen to work for a very large marketer of video game systems and software.  I happen to believe that video games are not the evil that they have been made out to be, and that has been my feeling ever since Pong made its debut on my family’s television in the very early 1970s. With that out of the way, let’s do a little discussin’, shall we?

Why Not Educational Video Games?

So, perhaps due in part to the (so far unfounded) bias against video games, many educators seem to have come to the conclusion that video games have no place in the educational environment.  Dr. Kahne offered a very good argument in favor of video games in the educational world.  However, he also raised a very good point about the development of  “educational” video games…they just don’t get made.  The reason for this seems to be that none of the major game developers are interested in making anything other than games with swords, guns, basketballs, or similar.  They’re just not convinced that they’ll sell.

I think that perhaps the reason for this is that thus far those that know how to create good educational materials are clueless about how to make a game that’s fun to play, and therefore marketable.  Conversely, those who know how to make fun, engaging games know nothing about education and learning.  The answer of course is to get a group together that has a passion for both gameplay and education.  I don’t think that this “perfect storm” of “edutainment” is far from being realized.

All that you have to do is look at the generation of individuals that is now coming to the fore in the educational field.  Our young instructional designers and educators are part of the gaming culture.  They know what’s fun in the video game arena.  They “get it” when it comes to making video games engaging and fun.  Nearly all of them have played video games in their youth, and I will wager that most continue to play them as the move into adulthood.  I think that, once the big publishers can be convinced that educational games really can be financially rewarding, they’ll be scouring resumes for people who have both video game and educational experience.  There will be a snowball effect.  When EA releases a game that actually teaches something and makes money, the rest will be eager to jump on that bandwagon.

The Teacher Component

The other side of the educational video game coin is the education establishment itself.  As I wrote earlier, there just isn’t much support so far for video games in the classroom.  They’re viewed as a distraction at best, and a negative influence at worst.  In order for a video game to really be successful, there has to be a market.  In my opionion, educators are the key.  As an example, you can look at what the computer hardware manufacturers have done to promote their products…they give them to the schools.  Apple was on the forefront on this, giving Macs to graphic design schools, universities, and even grade schools.  As those students graduated and moved into the workforce, guess which brand of hardware they chose?

Now, imagine what would happen to the world of video games if teachers began to introduce them into schools as part of their curriculum.  Once the shock wore off, parents would begin to see the other side of video games (which many actually see now), given the stamp of approval by those who should “know about these things”.  In addition, the parents themselves will have grown up in the video game generation, and will most likely as a whole not harbor the same misconceptions and confusion about video games that we see so much of currently.  Video games will be okay, and publishers will begin to see that they can begin to market video games on their educational merit to a constituency that sees their potential value.

Video Games Cause Violent Behavior, Right?

Video games still have a bad rep, and this stigma is probably going to be the most difficult hurdle to overcome when moving into the educational realm.  There is no end to the number of armchair psychologists who swear that video games cause any number of societal ills.  It seems that not a week goes by when there isn’t some violent tragedy where video games get the blame.  Everything from childhood obesity to divorce rates cause the video game finger pointing to begin.  While in some cases there may be a connection, the issues where video games are the scapegoat are far too complex to pin on a single cause, especially when you consider that most of the issues aren’t new.  One comment that I read recently on a video game oriented website summed it up well…did Hitler play Counterstrike, the board game, as a child?  I doubt it.

At the point of the controversy, in my opinion, is the concept of causation versus correlation.  Many video game critics such as Jack Thompson and the (dubiously) Honorable Keith Vaz love to quote studies that they claim prove that violent video games cause violent behavior.  One of Thompson’s favorite terms is “causal link”.  However, there has yet to be a credible study that proves a causal link between video game (or other media) violence and violent behavior.  All credible studies that have linked violent behavior with violence in video games have done so in a correlative way.

Big deal right?  They’re linked either way.  Well, there is a big difference.  A causal link in one in which an event or action occurs as a direct result of another action; the initial action causes the resulting event to take place.  There is a causal link between swinging a hammer and a nail being driven into a piece of wood.

A correlative link, on the other hand, is a link between two events where there is no established cause between the two.  Usually, a correlative link between events exists when a third event (or set of events) causes both events to occur simultaneously, or at least within the same context.  If you have your television and a table lamp plugged into the same outlet, and that outlet is controlled by a wall switch, then someone who is simply observing when someone else turns on the switch will see the light turn on, and then see the television turn on a few seconds later after it warms up.  While someone could come to the conclusion that there is a causal link between the light glowing and the television coming on since every time they see the television turn on it is immediately preceded by the light turning on, the actual cause is someone else turning on the switch.  The television and lamp have a correlative relationship.  They both always come on at the same time, but there is something else causing both actions.

In the case of violent actions and violent video games, it is very likely that the same emotional or mental issues that drive an individual to commit unspeakable acts also drives them to play violent games.  There are uncounted numbers of people who play violent games every day who never experience the urge to go out and mow down a play yard full of children.  So far, studies have backed this position up.  Some have suggested a correlative relationship between the two, but the only studies that even hint at a causal link have been discredited due primarily to sloppy research.  The bottom line is that the argument that many politicians and overly ambitious lawyers have put forth condemning video games as the cause of all that is bad in our society is as full of holes as Solid Snake on a bad day at the office.

What About the Title?

Okay, so what does the title of this little diatribe mean?  It came about after a conversation that I had in the halls of SFSU with one of my classmates.  We were discussing the resistance that the educational community has to introducing educational video games into the classroom, and he hit on the idea of referring to them as “activities” rather than video games.  I thought that was genius, and wonder to this day why he isn’t making the big bucks working for Capcom as their director of marketing.  There’s a similar issue on the developer end too…calling a game “educational” is the kiss of death.  An “educational” game will never make it past the napkin that it’s first conceived on.

So, how about this…let’s call them “Socially Constructive Games(tm)” to the publishers, and “Hyper-engaging Electronically Enhanced Learning Activities(tm)” to the educators.  Maybe that’ll get the ball rolling!  Or not, but I’m out of ideas, energy, and time, so this ends here.  There’s a lot more to be said on the subject, and I invite you to flesh it out below!

EDIT (3/23/09):  Here’s an interesting opinion piece posted in The Harvard Crimson last week about appropriate reactions to teen violence. Via GamePolitics.com.

Very interesting class last week (sorry, I’m a bit late on this post). I enjoyed seeing some examples of virtual worlds like Second Life. It was really interesting to hear some of the anecdotes presented. I’ve been tempted to check out Second Life, although I don’t think I’d stick around very long. You see, I have the urge to kill…

ORCS AND GOBLINS!

Okay, maybe I’m not quite as gung ho as all that, but I’ve had some experience with Massively Multiplayer Online games, or MMOs as they’re commonly called. There are a whole pile of subclasses of games, MMORPGs (MMO Role Playing Games), MMORTSs (MMO Real Time Strategy games), MMOFPSs (MMO First Person Shooters), etc. They all have one thing in common…you’re in a virtual world populated by thousands of computer controlled characters, and thousands of characters (avatars) controlled by real humans. Sounds a bit geeky, and I guess it is. Sue me.

What you’re missing here, if you’ve already written this post off as geek gamer crap, is what this represents. There are over 11 million active accounts in the game world that I visit. That’s somewhere around the population of the country of Greece. The ENTIRE country of Greece. Every dude, chick, and brat. And this is only one MMO type game, although it is by far the largest. There are hundreds of other MMO games and virtual worlds out there, and each one can be built however the builder wants.

Want to fly? Done!

Want to be able to make mountains with the flick of a finger? Done!

Want to dominate thousands without worrying about hurting a fly? Done!

Want to…well, you get the idea.

The true significance of these worlds in the context of education is, of course, making education compelling and collaborative.  Because you can set the world up however you’d like to to be, you have complete flexibility to make learning fit the needs of your learners.  When I take a vacation from reality in World of Warcraft, I’m no longer a mundane human sitting in a chair sipping a beer while punching some keys.  I am TREVIZE, OCCUPIER OF THE WORLD OF AZEROTH with my trusty white tiger by my side!  I am no longer limited by my puny human body!  I no longer have a paunch! I’m no longer balding!  Here’s one of the most important parts…I have my friends at my side as I set off for conquest!

Now, let’s say you could do the same thing to teach a foreign language.  You and your online friends, acquaintences, and maybe a stranger or two set off on a quest to gather the Pronouns of Perpetual Pain in the town of Grammarhaven.  You team up and begin your hunt.  Suddenly, your groupmate announces over the chat line that she’s spotted a wild “us” and you’re off!  But, you have to use the correct weapon/trap/what-have-you, because we all know how slippery those “us” things are…you must use the weapon/trap/what-have-you that corresponds to your native language’s translation of “us”.

Maybe a bit far out, but I think that you get where I’m going with this…before you know it, you’re understanding, speaking, and writing pronouns in a foreign language, and you don’t even remember how you learned them.  Better yet, you had others there to work with you, and together you learned things in a quarter of the time it would have taken you alone…and you had fun doing it!

Mashing Up

One thing that stuck out for me when reading Growing Up with Google was the idea of mashups.  How cool would it be to combine Second Life and Google Earth?  It’s probably already been done (I think that the article mentioned something like this) but in case it hasn’t, imagine the possibilities.  You could travel anywhere you wanted, and have a whole pile of information and photos available as soon as you got there (which would be microseconds).  How about combining that with a GPS and VR glasses…walking around Rome, you’d be able to toggle from a real-time view of your surroundings with little virtual tags hanging in front of historic buildings, shops, restaurants, etc., and full, 3D views of artist’s renderings of what the historic buildings looked like in their heyday.  How cool is that?

Anyway, enough for now.  I’m late enough on this post and it’s time to get ready to go find out more about Serious Games (no smiling when you say that!).

This week in my ITEC830 class we were graced with the presence of Dr. Ellen Wagner. From her blog site:

“Ellen Wagner is a Partner and Principal Analyst for Sage Road Solutions / Sonoma Partners. She is responsible for learning industry market trend research aggregation, trend analysis, forecasting and decision support.”

This is a pale representation of her accomplishments, but I don’t want to scrape her blog too much.  You can learn more about her on her blog’s about page (click it).

In any case, I have to say that this week’s class was easily the most inspiring class so far in this course from my perspective.  Dr. Wagner’s enthusiasm for the subject of Instructional Technology, and in particular the next phase of the Web (Web 3.0…ugh, buzzwords!) could have lit the campus if we’d bothered to plug her into the wall.  At one point in her discussion she pointed out how a simple idea can get into her head and spawn a thought string starting with, “Oooo…and I can use that to do this, and this, and this and this!”  There were several times during the class that her words had me reciting the same mantra.

I could probably spend hours and pages going over all of what she said and the thoughts that were sparked by her wisdom.  However, given the time available to me and the disk space that my web host allows me to monopolize, I’m going to focus on a few points that stuck out for me.

Taking Applications Off of the Desktop

One comment that Dr. Wagner made that started my brain pulsing was that we need to start putting some thought into how we can take applications off of our computer desktop.  She wasn’t referring to things like GoogleDocs.  She was talking about ways to take those applications off of our computers and put them onto devices that we can take with us and connect to the world from anywhere.  Mobile devices.  Mobile phones, portable email and web devices named for small thorny fruit, those sorts of things.  We need applications that will allow us to collaborate wherever and whenever we want, and they need to be accessible.

Sure, I hear you say that we already have them in the form of iPhones, the aforementioned fruit-named things, etc.  However, these things are really only available to an “elite” class of folks…those who reside in affluent parts of the world.  How about parts of the world where the monthly wage wouldn’t buy a bag of groceries here in the U.S.?  Many people in the developing world have access to cell phones, but not the kind that will allow us to take the apps off of the desktop.  Often it’s a half-day journey just to get to an Internet cafe where they can spend a day’s wages just to send a few emails.

How fast do you think the people of the world would progress if access to applications that allow online learning were universal?  I’m not talking about the kind of progress that brings new products and technologies to the market (although that certainly would follow).  I’m talking about allowing people to progress to the point of being able to contribute to world knowledge and benefit from the same.  Think about the benefit that all of that additional brainpower would bring to simple things like feeding people, powering the world cleanly, and giving everyone the chance to improve themselves using existing technology.  It seems to me that the benefits far outweigh the costs, and that brings me to another point…

Business Leaders Just Don’t Get Education

Of course, this isn’t a true statement as written.  Many business leaders do understand the benefits of education and learning.  However, so many are wrapped up in sniffing the bottom line and keeping the shareholders happy for one more quarter that the idea of improving the learning process just doesn’t fit in.  Speaking from personal experience, I can say that in many cases education and training are often given lots of lip service, but beyond things like tuition reimbursement programs and “what you need to know to do your job minimally” training, most companies don’t offer much.  Dr. Wagner put forth this thought based on her experiences in both the instructional and business worlds (read her bio…she’s done it all!)

How much would business benefit by offering collaborative training that in turn is part of every employee’s responsibility?  How many “diamonds in the rough” are out there, working away in a job that they know how to do but have much more to offer in another role?  How about setting up education programs where the Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) can offer up their knowledge in a Wiki-like environment that others can easily access and learn from?  When thinking about answers to these questions, consider how current techniques and technology can play a part in facilitating the spread of knowledge throughout a company’s culture.  What the evolving world of online learning technology is offering is a way for these kinds of programs to flourish, and ways for companies to grow new talent.

To bring the first topic back to the fore, this type of learning policy is the perfect match to the desktop-free learning environment. While the accountant is riding the train in to work, she’s learning web design on her iPhone from an internal Wiki that was put together by their IT group.  Next thing you know, she’s directing development of online tools for expense tracking!  Whether or not you think that’s a good example, you get the idea.

Keeping it Simple

One thing that we have to keep in mind though is keeping all of these new ideas in learning manageable for the average learner like me.  One of my favorite quotes from Dr. Wagner’s presentation is, “I want today to work.  I don’t want to have to figure out every new thing.”  True dat!  I’m getting myself updated on Facebook, Tweeting my friends and contacts, all while writing this blog and checking old-fashioned email.  How many new technologies will be coming out in the next few years that will do these things better and keep me even MORE in touch with my world?  Do I really CARE?  DON’T I HAVE ENOUGH TO DO ALREADY?!?

One answer in my opinion is, not  too surprisingly I guess, collaboration.  I’m not referring to collaboration among people.  I’m talking about collaboration among our new Internet toys.  It’s already happening to some extent, such as Facebook’s plugin for Twitter.  However, with the flood of new applications and web gadgets that pop up seemingly every day, it’s hard to keep it all straight.  To add to the complication, what happens when a new gadget hits the market, and half of your collaborators migrate to the shiney new thing, but the other half don’t?  Does that mean that you have to do both?  Do I have to junk my phone and go buy (and learn to use) a new iPhoneMondoCoolio just to keep up with the pack?

Perhaps that’s where we as Instructional Technologists need to take the reigns.  We need to look at what works and what doesn’t in a collaborative environment.  Using collaboration to figure out the best ways to collaborate I suppose.  Of course that means coming up with some standards to start with, and I’m not ready to take that responsibility.  Dr. Foreman has mentioned several times that Instructional Designers are still clinging to the old ADDIE model.  Maybe part of a new learning model should include a way to manage the changing Internet and collaborative learning environment?

Share your thoughts below!

In this week’s class, we had a virtual talk by Dr. Curt Bonk of Indiana University. It was very interesting from the perspective of a virtual classroom. Through the (sometimes balky) magic of the Internet, we were able to see Dr. Bonk live on a monitor in our classroom from a classroom in the Midwest, and he was able to see us. It was easy to see how this type of learning can easily be scaled to hundreds or thousands. In fact, he related a couple of anecdotes of his own in which a small class suddenly blossomed into a worldwide class of thousands through the use of the Internet and video conferencing technology. Incredible.

It seemed that one of the most important points to learn from Dr. Bonk was that…he has written a book! It’ll be on sale later this year. The seemingly constant stream of, “In my book…” or, “As my book states…” or, “I go over this in my book” really detracted from the class for me, for a couple of reasons. The first was that I felt that the time in school that I’ve paid for should be spent more productively than on an infomercial. Secondly, it seems a bit ironic to me that an “old-fashioned” book is the focus of a lecture in a class about collaborative learning.

Now, that said, I have to say that what I’ve read of Dr. Bonk’s book, “The World is Open: How Web Technology is Revolutionizing Education” (not sure of the publisher, but the website is located at http://worldisopen.com), was very enjoyable and interesting. He makes many salient points about how learning is changing in our increasingly Internet-based world.  He’s also releasing a companion book over the Internet that brings the book itself into the web-learning forum, so my second concern in the previous paragraph is somewhat allayed. I like his acronymical* model as well:

Ten Openers: (WE-ALL-LEARN)

1. Web Searching in the World of e-Books
2. E-Learning and Blended Learning
3. Availability of Open Source and Free Software
4. Leveraged Resources and OpenCourseWare
5. Learning Object Repositories and Portals
6. Learner Participation in Open Information Communities
7. Electronic Collaboration
8. Alternate Reality Learning
9. Real-Time Mobility and Portability
10. Networks of Personalized Learning

The WE-ALL-LEARN model pervades his writing, and I think it covers the bases fairly well.  It points out the important components of what learning is becoming.

One line that I read made me think back to a previous post in this blog.  When talking about how learning will be distributed in the coming Internet age, Dr. Bonk notes that, “For most members of this planet, such access will begin with their mobile phones”.  I’m very happy that others see this important point as well.  What this means to me is that, if we really expect our teachings to reach the farthest corners of our planet, we need to be very careful about how we present the information.  The mobile phones in use in much of the world today aren’t iPhones or their clones.  They’re relatively simple picturephones with relatively limited multimedia capabilities.

For this reason, although our desire to make everything all whizbangcoolioneatobeato* might be strong, we might be doing the world a favor by keeping to the basics as much as possible.  Wikis, blogs, etc. can thrive in this environment I think.  Bandwidth-hungry video, animation, maybe not so much.  I don’t think that the experience that we had in class with the virtual lecture would be possible over most cellphones.  This is why we need to ensure that what we create includes thought about Dr. Bonk’s 9th tenet: “Real-time mobility and portability”.  For many, this will be the only form of access that they have.

Whatever my first impression of Dr. Bonk may be, I’m looking forward to reading his work.  I think that we see eye-to-eye on many points, and those that we don’t will only serve as points of exploration for me.  I thank him for sharing his time with our class as well, although I’d bet he could write it off as a marketing expense (j/k Dr. Bonk ;-)).  I hope that he continues to share his work and ideas with future classes.  It’s well worth the time to explore.

*It’s a word if I say it is.

This week I was part of an outstanding team of researchers tasked with presenting an overview covering Blogs (thanks Jonathan!), Twitter (great job Brian!), and Wikis (adequate at best Jeff). The presentation was moderated masterfully by Zack.

For those interested in a copy of the presentation materials, I’ve published the original GoogleDoc presentation below:

If you can’t see the presentation, or would like a take-home copy, you can download them by clicking one of the links below:

itec830_class_presentation_1.ppt
itec830_class_presentation_1.pdf

If you can’t download or view either of these files, shoot me an email and I’ll add you to the GoogleDocs share list.

EDIT:  You can now view the presentation directly as an embedded object above!  Isn’t Web 2.0 cool?  Thanks for suggesting this Ethan!