I’m taking a week off from posting to get settled into school and to enjoy the long weekend. See you back on September 4th.

“It’s the truth; it doesn’t need to be referenced.”

I recently purchased Wondershare’s Elearning tools.  I’ve had a lot of fun with the Demo Creator (check out this demo on building a webpage).  My next project is to convert my PowerPoint lectures to Flash and building a Flash quiz.

Yeah, I could program these the hard way but I like the ease of these tools.  And I know the students like them.

School started back for me today.  Technically, it really began yesterday but I only had to show up for a short meet-and-greet in the three classes I am co-teaching this semester.  I have never team-taught before so this will be new.

Still too damn hot here in Louisville (KY) for the start of the school year.  I look forward to jacket weather and watching the squirrels run around the quad.

Just recently completed Pull: Networking and Success since Benjamin Franklin which is a comprehensive history of social networking in America since the Colonial times. Starting with probably the most famous social networker ever, Pamela Laird demonstrates how Benjamin Franklin used his connections to advance himself personally, professionally, and politically. The basic thesis of the book is a simple and well-known: to get ahead, you need a good network of colleagues and mentors who will “pull” you along.

The important lesson in this book is how important social capital is to success. As Laird demonstrates, minorities and women did not have the ready access to social networking that white males did and, until they developed networks, their opportunities were limited. It wasn’t until minorities and women deliberately created social networks (”synthetic social capital” as Laird terms it) that they began to advance forward. I’m not sure that white males are genetically endowed with “natural social capital” but it proves that social networking can be just as exclusionary as it is inclusive. And this exclusion can be institutionalized and even seem natural.

As we continually advocate collaboration, we must be aware to not inadvertently exclude people from the benefits of social networking. We are very tribal people and it is easy to form groups that inherently exclude others (read Us and Them: Understanding Your Tribal Mind by David Berreby). In our rush to adopt the new collaborative technologies, we should take the time to ensure that they are truly collaborative.

(Cross-posted at Eclectic Bill).

Meme from the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies:

“In July we asked e-learning professionals - consultants, analysts, developers, practitioners, academics, etc - to let us know what their 10 favourite tools were for their own personal working and learning or for creating and delivering learning solutions. Here are the results so far. “

No one has tagged me yet so I just tagged myself.

10. Notepad - just damn handy when you are transferring selections, need to quickly fix a webpage or javascript, and for composing long entries for wikis and emails.
9. Excel - I use it for grading and to perform some data-cleaning when I send data to SPSS.
8. Gliffy - better than a whiteboard for drawing diagrams (especially with my drawing skills).
7. MyNoteIt - why I let my students type in class. Great way to share notes and create connected knowledge.
6. Audacity - very easy to use and great for creating podcasts.
5. PBWiki - I’ve used this several times to help students create wikis. Great interface and easy-to-understand markup.
4. MyWeb - Great bookmark tool. I know most folks prefer Delicious but I just think this has more features and is easier to work with.
3. Open Office - Terrific alternative to the high-cost of Microsoft Office. I use it and recommend it to my students.
2. Ubuntu - Terrific alternative to the high-cost and low-performance of Microsoft Vista. Very easy to install and operate with a Windows-like feel.
1. Moodle - Hands down the best learning management system out there. Ahead of all the others in features and ability to modify. No wonder Blackboard tried to patent it out of existence.

Someone else go ahead and tag yourself.
(Cross-posted on Eclectic Bill)

(opens up YouTube window)

Social Bookmarking in Plain English

Social Networking in Plain English

Wikis in Plain English

Thanks SoulSoup for the pointer.

Andrew Grove (former CEO of Intel) wrote about “strategic inflection points” in his 1999 book, Only the Paranoid Survive.  As I read the Educause Top Ten Teaching and Learning Issues for 2007, I thought about Grove’s definition of a strategic inflection point:

“They represent, in my description of it, what happens to a business when a major change takes place in its competitive environment. A major change due to introduction of new technologies. A major change due to the introduction of a different regulatory environment. The major change can be simply a change in the customers’ values, a change in what customers prefer.”

It is clear from the Educause list that there is a major change in four areas: environment, technology, accountability ( similar to regulation), and customers’ values and preferences.   When you hit a strategic inflection point, you must make a fundamental change in the strategy of the organization.  “Nothing less is sufficient,” states Groves.

The problem with strategic inflection points is that it is totally different from anything you have ever dealt with in the past.  Thus, the arguments tend to be emotional because you have little data to go on (at first).  But, a good sign of strategic inflection point is that what worked in the past is no longer working as well (or even working at all).

As Grove describes it, there are two stages to strategic inflection points.  The first is the chaotic stage in which organizations experiment wildly in the new environment.  During this process, organizations try to determine what strategies seem to have the best fit for the new environment.  The second stage is where the better performing strategies are formalized into the organization’s structure.

You can see the first stage at play in education with numerous experiments involving wikis, blogs, and other collaboration tools.  There is also an emphasis on accountability and calls for the new tools to prove themselves pedagogically.  Formalization has yet to begun but several pathfinder institutions have started to formulate policies and develop centers of best practices under what is called “Instruction 2.0″ (or sometimes “Education 2.0″).

In the meantime, education will be going through some turbulent times as the old model will be replaced with a still fuzzy and uncertain new model of education that reflects the new generation of students and a very-changed world.

From the latest EDUCAUSE Quarterly:

1. Establishing and supporting a culture of evidence
2. Demonstrating improvement of learning
3. Translating learning research into practice
4. Selecting appropriate models and strategies for e-learning
5. Providing tools to meet growing student expectations
6. Providing professional development and support to new audiences
7. Sharing content, applications, and application development
8. Protecting institutional data
9. Addressing emerging ethical challenges
10. Understanding the evolving role of academic technologists

What this list is saying is that the old style of higher education teaching is no longer valid.  And with a few word changes, you can see similar issues for training.

The Bloggers’ Blog has a balanced view on the Wikipedia versus libraries controversy.  This is a refreshing change from the usual overly-pro or con opinions.  When answering the question on which is better, the correct answer is of course that it matters in what the user is looking for.  I use Wikipedia for a quick read on a technical topic and when I am interested in a current pop-culture topic.  But if I am looking for information on nutrition or for more in-depth research on a science topic, I go to the library.   When I want comprehensive information and a wide range of opinions on a topic, the library is the best place to go.

But what is missing from the library bookshelves is what Wikipedia does best.  There are no stickers on the library shelves that tell me that a certain topic (such as evolution) has generated a great deal of differing opinions and that what appears to be a settled issue is still open to debate.  With each Wikipedia entry, there is a related discussion board  in which the topic can be discussed.  This is a great teachable moment as students learn even “settled historical facts” are not as certain as the experts would have you believe.  In my class, I have the students do an Internet scavenger hunt with one question being the date of Venezuela’s independence.  The actual date varies depending on the interpretation of the political process at the time.

Of course, the biggest complaint about Wikipedia is the ease which inaccurate information can be inserted into the entries (as Stephen Colbert so entertainingly demonstrated).  But it is also just as easy to correct misinformation (as compared to Wikipedia’s rival - Encyclopedia Britannica).

The greatest lesson from this “alleged” rivalry is that the reliance on one source of information is dangerous and that a open and skeptical mind is the best way to approach an issue.  Even this one.

During lunch today, I took a stroll over to the local Borders bookstore.  I like to browse the business and management section to determine what is the hot business idea of the moment.  Judging from the number of new books on the topic, collaboration seems the next big thing.  And this means that an army of trainers and consultants will soon be offering the silver bullet solutions to give you the collaborative edge.

Why I find this amusing is that the foundation for collaboration is built on trust.  And for anyone who has lived through the late-80s and all through the 90s of the corporate world, trust was the first casulty of reengineering, merging, and downsizing solutions that prevailed in that time.  Now, organizations are being told that they need to grow trust in the workplace and collaboration will flower. 

Of all the soft skills, trust will be the hardest to train people in because this is not a skill but a belief.  And with belief, experience is the teacher.  It’s like the argument I have with some colleagues on “creating” a community of practice.  You can’t just lump a group of people together and demand they create a COP by the end of the month.  This is a complex and very human experience in which people must learn to trust and then begin to work with one another.  Collaboration is the same way; you can’t just order it and have it installed by next Tuesday.  The trusting behavior must be modeled, perceived, and rewarded if it is to take root in the organization.  I’m not sure many organizations have the patience or the will to do this.