amaztype: A fun little app.
Thanks to Alan for posting this link to his blog. Go give it a quick try (maybe type in "design", wait for the word to build, then click around a bit), then come back to this post for a Fun Friday Rant!
As I think about issues related to design, I am increasingly convinced that creativity is sorely lacking among most learning professionals (LPs). Some might blame ISD process models (i.e. ADDIE) for such lack of creativity but I disagree. Having a process does not mean you cannot be creative!
We have become so focused on making "effective" solutions that we (LPs) often forget that we are designing for human beings! I think there might be a couple of reasons for this.
One is that there is that we do not spend enough time understanding what it means to design as opposed to develop something. Our master's and doctoral programs spend time on ISD process, technology, instructional and learning theory. These are all necessary but not sufficient conditions for being a successful LP! Where is the course on creativity in design?
A second reason (i.e. excuse) is that many of the emerging learning technologies tend to make people think there is even less room to be creative. One of the areas I am researching, the dreaded "learning objects," can be especially oppressive and decidedly uncreative. Some will argue this is a reason not to use an object-oriented design approach (OOID). I argue that you can be creative with any technology and it is the outstanding designer who will bring creativity to the design.
My point is that any medium has constraints, it is how we work within those constraints that determines how creative we really are (e.g. you can say print-based training is "boring" - and the way designers create it, it generally is, but it is not the fault of the paper and ink - have you ever read a good fiction novel? The paper and ink are the same, aren't they?).
This little Amaztype application someone wrote is not a pragmatic or efficient tool. But it made me smile! It made me want to use it, to play, to have fun with an Amazon search. Would I use this for a quick search for products? Of course not. But it did inspire me to think (this post is part of the result). How many of your instructional designs have inspired learners to think for themselves, smile, and enjoy their day just a little bit more?
LPs please stop taking everything so seriously, open up your own playful side, and try, at least once today, to build something into a design that has no other purpose but to make your learners smile and think! (note, if you think taking a multiple-choice Flash(TM) applet and calling it a "Fun Quiz" with a flashing exclamation point is what I mean, you need to go back and use the Amaztype site again).
You'll enjoy your job more and so will your learners!
End Rant.
The New York Times > New York Region > Wrong, Wrong and Wrong: Math Guides Are Recalled (Free registration required)
From the article:
Some answers in the guide were wrong. Other questions suffered from odd wording, the incorrect notation of exponents and sloppy diagrams. Besides the math mistakes, there were problems with grammar and spelling. For instance, the word "fourth" was misspelled on the cover of the fourth-grade manual.According to school officials, a fact-checker within the department failed to do a proper job.
I'll bet all the math teachers could have fixed this whole thing in a matter of minutes, if it had been done with a wiki...
Yahoo purchased Flickr and, according to the NY Times (registration required), Ask Jeeves (who recently bought Bloglines) has been bought out by IAC/Interactive (owners of Expedia, Home Shopping Network, and more) for a cool $2 billion.
Who is next?
I have created a new short lesson that will be part of a larger unit on blogging for my integrating tech in K-12 course. The topic of this 10-minute lesson is on subscribing with and using Bloglines as a feed reader.
I also have it available on the right side of the page to teach people how to subscribe to blogs. My current class is pilot testing the mini course and I have fixed a few typos based on feedback.
This lesson was hastily assembled and is meant to meet the needs of an audience that might have very little tech experience.
Any additional feedback is welcome.
D’Arcy Norman Dot Net » Blog Archive » On Reusability (in learning objects)
"Real reusability is only effectively possible when dealing with smaller resources."
Let me pose another side to this argument. While smaller bits might sometimes have more potential reusability, entire sites can be reused if certain design considerations are taken into account. I agree with Wiley's Reusability Paradox and the focus is primarily on automated use of learning objects and not by-hand reuse.
In other words, if you plan for reusability with the instruction you are creating, then larger segments of the intervention can be reused. For example, I am creating a lesson on blogging. I am building this lesson so that I can drop it into any number of other courses I teach or even as a mini-lesson I can post to my site. In this case, the smaller bits (animations) are useless without the larger context of the lesson. The entire lesson, however, is easy for me to drop into any course I might teach.
This issue does, however, point to an apparent difference that I have mentioned previously between formal and informal learning objects. Formal learning objects are created primarily to support an instructional objective (i.e. part of a course) and informal learning objects are the other trillion potential digital resources that may not have been created for instruction but could be reused or repurposed for an instructional goal. When discussing informal learning objects, I take much more of the approach that Stephen Downes described in his FLOSSE Posse interview (it is how the content is used that determines whether an object is a learning object). Formal "objects" can be built to facilitate reuse much easier than informal ones.
You can design for reusability. To think that everything should be reusable is part of what makes this topic seem so overwhelming to many people. From a business perspective, one colleague of mine has conducted an ROI on reusability and discovered that significant returns are available if we reuse only 6% of what we create. Thinking in those terms, it is much less overwhelming to think that one or two "objects" in every course might be reusable (even large objects like an entire lesson)!
I plan to discuss some of my work on this topic at the upcoming AERA meeting in Montréal at the Technology, Instruction, Cognition & Learning (TICL) SIG meeting.
IT Conversations: Clark Aldrich - Simulations and the Future of Learning
My commute home yesterday was filled by a 50-minute conversation by Clark Aldrich at Accelerating Change 2004. The mp3 file can be found at the link above.
I found his presentation to be grounded and realistic about the future of games and simulations. One notable comment was that the more motivated (internally or externally) someone is to learn content, the fewer gaming elements are needed to keep them engaged. This is an important point when considering how motivating a game can be in training.
In fact, I believe games can be de-motivating if someone already has a desire to learn the content and a high degree of expertise in the area (think of Dale's Cone of Experience here).
Another excellent point is that Games like the Virtual Leader Sim created by Clark's company, SimuLearn, present challenges because they represent a new genre in the simulation space. Having "played" Virtual Leader to evaluate it, I clearly understand the complexity and the challenges with building these types of interventions. Despite the quality of such simulations, I think it is important to appropriately set expectations for the learner. One selling point I have heard from vendors is that we must compete with what the gaming generation is used to seeing. This is a mistake. One great aspect to Virtual Leader makes no pretension that it is on the level of an entertainment game with a $50 million dollar budget. Animations in the VL sim are good but nowhere near something like what you might see in The Sims or some other commercial title. For someone looking to learn the content without such expectations, this should not be an issue and it is a notable difference in creating a new genre.
A good-quality audio file that is worth a listen if you have an interest in the area of using games and simulations for learning to improve performance.
Microsoft to buy Groove Networks | Tech News on ZDNet
Microsoft looks like it is going to make a serious play to become more dominant in the collaboration space. Combine this breaking story with the March 8th post on theofficeweblog about the unveiling of Microsoft's new Office Communicator 2005 that is about to get released, and you get a very clear picture of where Microsoft is heading.
It appears that the folks in Redmond understand that work no longer centers around one person on a PC but is a collaborative effort. At some point, it seems logical MS is going to have to consolidate its growing number of collaboration products.
More at Business Week here.
incorporated subversion » WikiTextbook
Funny that you mention this. I just described such a proposal to my online K-12 Technology Integration class in a what-if scenario this week. What if, all the math teachers and a few math professors got together with a Wiki and decided to build their own text that meets state standards, etc.? With states (here in the U.S.) so strapped for cash, what would the teachers choose: the wiki they themselves created for free or, the $5 million a year shiny textbooks from the publishers? Obviously, this is not a new idea but, it was an interesting discussion for teachers who have not thought about this possibility before.
This will happen. We will know it's a threat when lobbyists begin to seek laws to make use of self-created materials difficult or impossible. It is already a struggle on the local level where I live to even allow the teacher to make any decision to use books other than the formally approved standard book. We will see what wins: state economics or publishing interests. I think Will is blogging on a related theme too.
After about 5 minutes of playing around with yet another Google tool in Beta, I have to agree with Jay's assessment, "So long, MapQuest."
Wow.
cogdogblog: I'm Bored As Hell And I;m Not Gonna ....... zzzzz
From the corporate and government side:
Elliott Masie is promising to blow up the "junior-high" model of conferences (e.g. a big assembly at the start followed by block schedules of speaker after speaker).
This conference, called Learning 2005, will replace Elliott's previous conference called TechLearn (sold off to a conference company).
We believe that the current conference models are a bit "stale." We are designing a model that focuses on how you really want to participate in an international event: dialogues, action projects, labs, access to learning stories, "neighborhoods" organized around common interests and plenty of "empty or white spaces" to have authentic conversations with colleagues.
I have some hints of what he is planning but I will wait to see what the Masie Center reveals publicly before making any comments.
Could be a fun new approach to the typical zzz.....
iterating toward openness » Blog Archive » Code as Ideology
For those interested in contemplating the legal, philosophical, and human issues related to modern digital technology, I recommend reading this post. It is not a typically short blog post because this is a well-formed draft of an upcoming article.
I enjoyed it because it forced me to try to fire up those weakening neural network connections to my undergraduate days where my second major was in philosophy with an emphasis on social and political thought.
While the few moments I have now is hardly enough time to do this article justice, it spurs a few random thoughts:
The battles between the old world of capital and the information age are still raging (as is evident in the article) but the fact that there is a battle implies the information age is already upon us.
Every new epoch offers technological solutions that break the power structure of a previous epoch. Capitalism crushed the feudal power system of land by creating a new locus of control. It is not that land had no power or value; it is that the power to control land shifted to capital. As we near the end of the information age, we can see that information now controls capital. Capital has not gone away as a means of control, but it is now subservient to the control of information.
Now, the reality is that the human condition may or may not be improved as a result of the shift in power. As Marx noted:
The first direct attempts of the proletariat to attain its own ends, made in times of universal excitement, when feudal society was being overthrown, necessarily failed, owing to the then undeveloped state of the proletariat, as well as to the absence of the economic conditions for its emancipation, conditions that had yet to be produced, and could be produced by the impending bourgeois epoch alone.
It is more realistic to think that a subset of the formerly oppressed becomes the new oppressors. Where is the new locus of control when information becomes ubiquitous? What is the next epoch's power structure? How can "we" prevent the overthrow of the information society power structure from resulting in the emergence of a new elite? Wiley and Gur note:
Like Marcuse, we think new types of "democratic" instrumental reason may generate new technological designs that turn the tables on the system....We follow these thinkers in rejecting the notion that technology is neutral...We believe that Zizek’s application of Sloterdijk’s notion of cynical reason to ideology provides a powerful analytical lens for viewing the function of code as law in society.
Agreed. But, if "we" have to enlighten "them" then have we fallen into the same trap of bourgeois elitism that was endemic, even in the early socialist thinkers of the 19th century. I fear that this is a problem with the use of critical theory to examine (artificially) the values of a worldview when we ourselves are also products of that worldview. Even a rejection of values (or lack thereof) becomes a vindication for the system itself and leads to the new oppression; rather than an emergent, democratic, and free human condition.
Cognitive Dissonance » Double Duh!
Once again, Nate provides some good fodder for discussion. I also have Educating the Net Generation (PDF) on my reading list but it is behind a couple of other things. One quick point here that I am trying to impress on people who are enamored with electronic games for learning. I think gaming (or other tech) can provide excellent instructional benefit, it is that we have to be aware that learner expectations are set by commercial products.
The more complex answer is that the Net Genners demand more than the systems are able to provide. To a Net Genner, the online classroom is a slum.
Many years ago, TV (and before that, radio) was seen as the answer to educational issues. How well have these done to change education? Certainly they added a new flavor but the programs did not match up to the expectations that the commercial products could provide. Like it or not, these commercial sources set the expectations of Net Genners. Any "educational" [insert technology here] risks becoming a very pale imitation (i.e. slum) version of what learners see in other places. But it is not what the system provides, it is how the system is used that creates the real problem. I believe it is much less about a particular medium, and much more about the methods employed when utilizing the medium. Seems there is a little debate in ed tech literature about this :)
In other words, IM is a revolutionary technology and can be used to great advantage to engage students. the problem is that, as educators, we don't know how to use it in the same way our students do when talking to 8 people at the same time in different windows.
Another issue is that when students use such technologies on their own, they are learning. They just are not learning the stuff we want them to! But that is an issue for another post.
Nice work and thank you Teemu and Timo!
I know that podcasting is like, so totally 2004, but I now have a way to get into that fray with my new iRiver. With my hour commute through the cornfields of Indiana from wonderful Bloomington to Indianapolis this morning, I fired up my first podcast. I am happy to report that this first experience was a very good one.
Last night before bed I downloaded the Flosse Posse interviews with Alan Levine, Antti Kauppi, and Stephen Downes. I listened to the interview with Alan this morning and got about 75% of the way through Antti's interview (will finish that one at lunch).
It was cool to hear Alan explain the history of how he got to where he is with instructional technology. I am an active reader of his blog so, I see the stuff he is currently working on and it was great to hear his big-picture view of the world.
I know there are many bizarre podcasts out there, which is a good thing, but I am glad that my experience was with these well-produced and interesting discussions. I look forward to the ride home this afternoon to listen to the interview with Steven.
Eide Neurolearning Blog and Learning Styles
More reasons for the goodness of blogging.
The best of blogs are rich in ideas and promote active exchange and critique. Rather than creating closed communities of like-minded troglodytes, these best blogs foster conversation, interactions with other blogs and other information sources, and invite feedback from their readers. Posts can form "threads" or links to other Web materials where readers can examine primary source material or articles that offer competing ideas and views. Blogs that follow this format are far from simple substitutes for television or video games. In fact, they are an ideal format for promoting critical and analytical thinking.
I agree. This is, perhaps, the most important aspect of blogs. It is more than a video game (not that there is not also immense potential for learning to occur with gaming) and also more than other types of web interactions (i.e. message boards, IM).
and
...to remain popular with readers, blogs must be updated frequently. This constant demand for output promotes a kind of spontaneity and 'raw thinking'--the fleeting associations and the occasional outlandish ideas--seldom found in more formal media.
It is the seemingly paradoxical nature of blogs and other related technologies that make them so powerful (e.g. critical thought and spontaneity; personal and social).
I read Barbara's bgblogging: Trackback Recap post with interest this morning (after a trackback to my trackback) because I am working on shifting my online Teaching with the Internet class from its current Course Management System (CMS) format to a mixed format of blogs, wikis, and the CMS. I am creating a brief lesson called "anatomy of a blog" and was toying with explaining the difference between Comments and Trackbacks.
In an earlier post, Barbara notes:
I admit I am a more selfish user of the Web, choosing to respond to other people's blogs via Trackback for the mostpart because I like to hang onto my thoughts on whatever topic I've responded to, weaving them into the archives of this evolving one-teacher's- reflection kind of blog, and I can't do that on someone else's blog. I want to see the evolution of my thinking on technology in the classroom, and most of the time I am interested in a line or so of someone else's posting, and so I use Trackback.
I feel the same way. When I comment, I feel like my thoughts are lost and I cannot go back and find them later. However, I do use comments when I just have a quick remark or point and I am not interested in continuing a dialog on a topic. Most of the blogs I now read have come about because I follow trackbacks to their owners and can find out more about that person.
On a more practical level, students need to understand the difference because some blogs turn off one or the other of these methods on their sites to combat spam.
Since I have a very wide range of technology comfort levels in my course, I do not want to overwhelm people who are already anxious and, in some ways, trackbacks vs. comments are one of those things that seem to me to be an unnecessary distinction. Why doesn't someone create a single UI that automatically makes this distinction for the user?
Cognitive Dissonance » More Long Tail
Nate, if we get to the point where we agree, then what happens to this thread? I think we have agreed in spirit on most of these posts. I just tend to be a bit more cautious when looking to a particular technology to change things. For me, it is much more about the activity the technology enables and issues of change related to adoption. I guess that is the point of dialog in any of its forms: to create a shared understanding even if it does not result in complete agreement.
I DO agree that AECT should embrace the new forms of information dissemination (note that I do not believe that this means one or another specific type of technology). I also suspect that all three of your hypotheses about lack of adoption within AECT are correct to varying degrees.
We know that there are a few AECT folks with blogs out there and it seems that only a few of us are actively connected. Rather than look to this as simply as berating those who need to get on board, why don't we now begin to move the conversation to discuss what we can do now, even with only a few people, to begin to affect change?
David made the suggestion that we put in a proposal at the conference to discuss these issues. I am sure there are a number of people who are going to have some sessions on blogging or other related technologies (Trey? David?).
Here's a fun thought: Why don't we not have a proposal and have a non-session. In other words, is there a place we could find to have a roundtable that is not official in any way and the only publicity is through blogs? I am somewhat familiar with the conference hotel, having been there for a different conference. There are some restaurants and other gathering areas. The title of the non-session (you have to have a catchy title, right?): "This session does not exist: Thoughts, musings, and debate over how AECT must change to meet the needs of the information age."
Of course, based on Nate's email to the DDL list on his recent experience with reading proposals, would non-session proposals be held to the same standard as session proposals 
.
UPDATE March 02: See the post yesterday on Radical Sessions on the AECT news blog.
cogdogblog: Now the iPodless Podcaster
A couple of days without checking Bloglines and I the backlog of good stuff is immense. This one, by Alan Levine, is very timely. I now have my iRiver working and, while I have not yet downloaded any podcasts, I hope to begin experimenting with it shortly.
This post is timely because I am interested in getting an audio stream capability set up on my MT Blog. I have done a bit of radio work in the past and think it would be fun to lend the pipes to something more interesting (and personalized) than the voiceovers I am doing for small e-learning multimedia projects. Of course, I am still waiting for Alan to post a hack that will let me add about 6-8 more hours to my day to have time to play with all this stuff!