So "FOUO"  = "For Official Use Only". Here is a link to detailed explanation of the term, turns out its a document classification, not a security level. That link in part defines it as: "This designation is used by Department of Defense and a number of other federal agencies to identify information or material which, although unclassified, may not be appropriate for public release." The interesting part is the one where I see a story come across Twitter about something that is not only in my professional area but a personal one as well. I click on the link (no, I'm not providing it here) and I go to a story on the Website of a widely-known tech magazine. There on the story page is an image that clearly has "FOUO" stamped on it.  I think that policy is pretty clear here. I don't think I can link to or use that image. We found out when Wikileaks hit, that just because something is now publically available, doesn't mean that its classification has changed - so this image is public but still FOUO. As a govt. employee, I think my options are clear - don't link to it or use it. I just find this really interesting - kinda doing some mental disection on what this feels like.  What would you do if you saw come across Twitter that was really juicy but contained proprietary information about or from your company? Would you RT it?  

Summer is the perfect time for playing games (albeit not outside in Arizona!) We had a great time yesterday with our "Game On!" webinar. David Roman, Technology Integration Specialist from Pinal County School Office, Professional Development Office was with us to talk about the K12 perspective on gaming in the classroom, and how it is impacting higher education. We talked about why gaming is SO engaging to our ASU students and why K12 teachers are using them. Two case studies were discussed, and we shared some quick ideas to get started. Additionally, there were a lot of links shared in the discussions, so be sure to click below to see all the resources.To watch a recording of our webinar, click hereTo download a PDF of the slides, click hereTo download a PDF of the handout with information and resources, click here.Chat Room Shared Links:Center for games and Impact at ASU: http://gamesandimpact.org/Gaming online at ASU: https://housing.asu.edu/content/gamingTahnja Wilson from ASU Online is promoting the use of games for teaching:  http://teachonline.asu.edu/2014/05/games-4-change-2014-highlights-why-not-use-games-in-education/Please be sure to join us for the "Brainstorm Blast" on August 5!You can submit your ideas for topics at: http://padlet.com/azpate/8akvpooirpj4To sign up for our Fall 2014 training opportunities, please go to: http://tinyurl.com/fall2014train

Today, I'm just sharing an interesting tool that I was introduced to at the "Teaching With Technology Conference" from Maricopa Community Colleges. The excellent presentation and hands on workshop was done by our ASU folks, Celia Coochwytewa, Jinnette Senecal & Steven Crawford from The College of Health Solutions. They gave a demo, and shared a really nice handout "Planning and Preparing for a DIY Presentation" for "scripting" out your video, which is really important to do before recording. They also presented the idea that creating a great video is like telling a story, and the scripting will help professors think through their video.The tool was Adobe Voice, which is a free app available on Ipads and Iphones. I was really pleased at how quickly my table could put together a professional video (about 10-15 minutes), from concept to output. Adobe Voice allows you to narrate images and text to create short videos that can be uploaded to Blackboard or emailed. Here's a sample of what my table quickly put together: Summary of What We Liked VideoSome of the nice features included:wide assortment for images from a gallery, your webcam, or searching through Creative Commons licenses.Easily add music for a backgroundEasy to add voice on each image, and it even told you when you were talking too long!Some of the disadvantages were that it is currently only available on Ipad and Iphones, and you do need to create a free account. Here are some ideas for how to use it in the "classroom":Have students show the process in their labs, by taking photos of each step, and then recording a summary of what happened.Have students create a case study, where there is a verbal description at each stage. Then have the class go through and discuss each case.Students can find an image of a famous scientist and tell what were the key points of their research, or an image of a plant, and describe the history of the use of it. Instructors can create short videos to give additional information on assignmentsInstructors can create a video on the top 5 most difficult questions on the exam.Easily replace in-class presentations with short videos that are reviewed by others in the classFor more information, try these resources:Adobe Voice Website Adobe Voice: Tell Your Story

(link)Hal Varian, professor of information sciences, business, and economics at the University of California at Berkeley, says it's imperative for managers to gain a keener understanding of the potential for technology to reconfigure their industries.   "We're in the middle of a period that I refer to as a period of "combinatorial innovation." So if you look historically, you'll find periods in history where there would be the availability of a different component parts that innovators could combine or recombine to create new inventions. In the 1800s, it was interchangeable parts. In 1920, it was electronics. In the 1970s, it was integrated circuits.   Now what we see is a period where you have Internet components, where you have software, protocols, languages, and capabilities to combine these component parts in ways that create totally new innovations. The great thing about the current period is that component parts are all bits. That means you never run out of them. You can reproduce them, you can duplicate them, you can spread them around the world, and you can have thousands and tens of thousands of innovators combining or recombining the same component parts to create new innovation. So there's no shortage. There are no inventory delays. It's a situation where the components are available for everyone, and so we get this tremendous burst of innovation that we're seeing."

CC-BY-NC-SA Jim BumgardnerMonday, November 18th3pm-4pm PSTOnline Assessment Roundtable - Hangout on Airhttp://tiny.cc/assessmentRT Today at 3pm PST I will be moderating a public Hangout on Air for The Center, a learning community that connects California's 112 community colleges, that will feature a dynamic panel discussion about online assessment.  This event is geared towards all educators who teach online or who are preparing to teach online.You are invited to view the live online video conversation, which will stream inside the Google Event, and ask questions through the Twitter backchannel (using #CCCLEARN) or the new Google+ "Submit your question" button, which we'll be trying out today.The panelists for today's Online Assessment Roundtable include: +Kathy Damm - Instructor of @ONE’s Designing Effective Online Assessments Course; Assistant Professor of Psychology, Saddleback College+William Doherty  - Instructor of @ONE’s Designing Effective Online Assessments Course, Former Director of @ONE; Owner, Third Star Consulting & Education+Sandra Haynes  - Professor of Art History, Pasadena City College; Mentor for the @ONE Online Teaching Certification Program; 2009 Winner Blackboard Exemplary Course Award+Kara Kuvakas  - Adjunct Physical Geography Instructor, Hartnell College; Adj. Professor of Chemistry & Environmental Science, Brandman University; Adj. Professor of Geology & Environmental Science, American Public University; Course Developer, Brandman University; Co-Founder of Connections Co-op for Homeschooling; Doctoral student at Brandman University; and Homeschooling Mom at Dehesa Charter School.The Center is brought to you by @ONEGoogle+ Community:  gplus.to/TheCenterTwitter:  @Center_Ed 

Mais um infograma, agora sobre o forma como os videojogos estão a mudar a educação: Via: Online Colleges Guide Ver também outros dois infogramas já publicados aqui e relacionados com este: Gamification of Education e How Internet is Changing Education.

  Do you make time for what's most important?  As I write this, it's almost 9 p.m. Except for a break to work out, take a shower and run some errands, I've been at my desk since 6:30 a.m.  I have a ton of work to do on my upcoming retreats and to prepare for several presentations I need to record for some clients. The clock is ticking and I'm freaking out a little about all that needs to get done, knowing that there are only so many hours in the day.  Several weeks ago, my Mastermind group decided to take all day tomorrow to do a mini business/career retreat. It has nothing to do with what's on my plate right now and EVERYTHING to do with my future.  I've had a drumbeat in my head all day that goes like this "I don't have time for this. Too much to do. No time to do a retreat about the future when I have things that need to be done RIGHT NOW."  I briefly entertained the notion of backing out, but aside from the fact that I'd made the commitment to my group, what also brought me up short was remembering an article I wrote about a year ago. The article was by Laura Vanderkam in the Wall Street Journal where she reminds us that how we use our time is always a choice.  She suggests that rather than saying "I don't have time" for something, instead we say "That's not a priority."  Wow. Powerful.  Thinking of tomorrow's retreat in that way really brought me up short. Is the future of my business NOT a priority for me? Yes, I have a lot of things to do, but are they more important than doing the strategic thinking and planning necessary for my career and professional health?  This is exactly what I talk with clients about all the time--spending too much time dealing with today and not enough time looking at the big picture and planning for an inspiring future. Because the truth is, taking a step back could give me new perspective on how to do today's work. And it gives me the space to think more strategically about what's next. The retreat would also fill me with the energy and motivation I need right now to get through all that I have on my plate.  So when you read this, I'll be on retreat. Taking the time to do what's important, even when it feels like I don't have it. Because it's not really about lack of time It's about shifting your priorities.   _____________________________________________________________________ Priorities and making time for what's important will be a big part of the Career Clarity virtual retreat. Click here for more information and the link to register! 

For the past month, I have been a lurker in the Khan Academy Google Group.  I've been reflecting on the constant flow of comments submitted by "users" of the Khan videos who include a wide mix of people but often are teachers and students.  I am inspired but also saddened by the comments from students who share empowering stories of how the videos have enabled them to experience their capabilities to learn.  And this experience is the catalyst that sparked my most recent GETInsight blog* post.  I hope you enjoy it and feel inspired to leave a comment on the post or in the VoiceThread."I’m Not Stupid": How Open Educational Video Resources Will Change the Future of Education*The GetInsight blog is an integrated resource of GETideas.org, a community for education leaders.  I am a paid consultant for GETideas and write a monthly post about a related topic.  Everyone is welcome to participate in the conversation and I hope you'll join us!

(story link)**As an aside, I love the new editing UI in Typepad...good job guys!So IBM is releasing something called OpusUna (which means something like "work as one"); "OpusUna enables participants to collaborate and communicate from within the same browser space, incorporating widgets, audio, and video cameras to display themselves on the screen. IBM envisions, for example, collaboration on patient care via sharing of medical images. Financial traders also could collaborate from around the world."Right now I guess its only working in Safari...??Anybody know any good change management or org dev conferences? I think I really need to hit some of those to see if our thinking about organizations and how they function is keeping anything close to the pace of tech advances....

Training as a competitive advantage.... "IBM, which expects to unveil better-than-expected quarterly figures, has announced it will spend some of its cash on incentives to encourage some of its largest partners to invest more in training and other areas. On Wednesday, the company introduced a scheme to help its business partners who are cooperating on its New Enterprise Data Center strategy. The scheme involves incentives for IBM partners to improve their knowledge in three specific areas: virtualization and consolidation; energy efficiency; and business resiliency." Imagine...using your own internal money to train your customers to use your systems and push technology forward...

Originally published on the Educational Technology and Change JournalI've read and re-read Innovating the 21st-Century University: It’s Time! by Tapscott D and Williams A, D (2010) published within Educause to try and absorb it's key messages. What I'll do here is quote some of the key messages and make comments:Universities are losing their grip on higher learning as the Internet is, inexorably, becoming the dominant infrastructure for knowledge — both as a container and as a global platform for knowledge exchange between people — and as a new generation of students requires a very different model of higher education.The important point here is that the internet has taken away the power of the monopoly of information away from all the previous custodians. Universities are one example. This has to be a good thing for learners and learning. If it's bad for the educational institutions in their current model then they have to change.We need to toss out the old industrial model of pedagogy (how learning is accomplished) and replace it with a new model called collaborative learning.This is an argument often made (particularly in educause). I've often talked about how it's really all about pedagogy not the technology. I wholeheartedly agree with this statement but the debate is very difficult to have and even more difficult to win. Firstly, because of the "no significant difference" argument, i.e. it's impossible to win a pedagogical argument. Also, in my institution (and I suspect elsewhere) there is no didactic mantra and code of conduct that everyone lives by. Sure, it's the default style but there are instances of collaboration, discussion, groupwork etc in many places. The point here is that much of higher education can make a case for innovative, collaborative pedagogy already existing if the need arises. So a "model of collaborative learning" would be difficult to implement not least because a "model of broadcast learning" doesn't officially exist. There are many other barriers but this is important.With technology, it is now possible to embrace new collaboration models that change the paradigm in more fundamental ways... this represents a change in the relationship between students and teachers in the learning process.This relates to the previous point and there's lots more like this which reads like a advert for collaborative pedagogy. I agree with it but there's not much to add.We like the direction of Vest's thinking. For universities to succeed, we believe they need to cooperate to launch what we call the Global Network for Higher Learning. This network would have five stages or levels: (1) course content exchange; (2) course content collaboration; (3) course content co-innovation; (4) knowledge co-creation; and (5) collaborative learning connectionThe main point of this article proposes this Global Network for Higher Learning. The stages are pretty self-explanatory. I'm not sure they really need 5 stages. The lowest level in the Global Network for Higher Learning is simple content exchange: colleges and universities post their educational materials online, putting into the commons what would have traditionally been viewed as cherished and closely held intellectual property. MIT pioneered the concept with its OpenCourseWare initiative (http://ocw.mit.edu), and today more than 200 institutions of higher learning have followed suit.This is the first stage. I've includes this to mention how far away we are from making this a reality. In the UK, we have the Open University and tiny, tiny amounts of a couple other institutions. As everything in this model flows from the free exchange of content it's hard to see how such an system could get off the ground. You would need a big sea change for it to be considered. Realistically, consortiums could spring up making a mini-networks. Consortiums set up for survival. The end result could act like a regional network and snowball from there.What higher education desperately needs is a social network — a Facebook for faculty. But it shouldn't be a standalone application; it should be integral to the Global Network for Higher Learning.My initial reaction to this was "no way". But we've seen how quickly such networks can explode. Perhaps an education only network is the answer and a valuable plank in this idea. At the moment, informal learning happens in an infinite variety of places (e.g. the blogosphere) but for formal education a truly collaborative communication platform is mouth-watering and I guess the obvious opposite of the closed VLE discussion boards. Why not allow a brilliant ninth-grade student to take first-year college math, without abandoning the social life of his or her high school? Why not encourage a foreign student majoring in math to take a high school English course? Why is the university the unit of measurement when it comes to branding a degree? In fact, in a networked world, why should a student have to assign his or her "enrollment" to a given institution, akin to declaring loyalty to some feudal fiefdom?I have mixed feeling about this but they have a point. At the moment, you go where your subject is strong. Is there enough of a need for variety to demand a piece from here, there and everywhere? This challenge the whole notion of a degree in one subject in favour of a variety of different one. I'm not sure this is really an issue. Certainly, all the identify that you are supposed to have with one institution is challenged in the Global Network. Next-generation faculty will create a context whereby students from around the world can participate in online discussions, forums, and wikis to discover, learn, and produce knowledge as networked individuals and collectively.I guess the logistics of this worry me. How will this happen? Who will look after it? Certainly, a global network will caters for all HE is far fetched. But an initially small scale one which gradually gathers pace could happen.As the model of pedagogy is challenged, inevitably the revenue model of universities will be too. If all that the large research universities have to offer to students are lectures that students can get online for free, from other professors, why should those students pay the tuition fees, especially if third-party testers will provide certificates, diplomas, and even degrees? If institutions want to survive the arrival of free, university-level education online, they need to change the way professors and students interact on campus.I think current survival is based on this generation of learners not quite being able to tap into what's out there and the quality and quantity of what's out there not quite being enough. This will change and it will be shock when it hits. I'm been saying this in my place for a while now.Many will argue: "But what about credentials? As long as the universities can grant degrees, their supremacy will never be challenged." This is myopic thinking. The value of a credential and even the prestige of a university are rooted in its effectiveness as a learning institution. If these institutions are shown to be inferior to alternative learning environments, their capacity to credential will surely diminish.Credentials is an area which I've seen argued as a area HE can effectively focus on in the future. This paragraph threatens this notion in an interesting way. Certainly, reputation is vital in this world and it's true of HE as much as anything else.As part of this, the academic journal should be disintermediated and the textbook industry eliminated. In fact, the word textbook is an oxymoron today. Content should be multimedia — not just text. Content should be networked and hyperlinked bits — not atoms. Moreover, interactive courseware — not separate "books" — should be used to present this content to students, constituting a platform for every subject, across disciplines, among institutions, and around the world.Some of this stuff is almost apocolyptic! I'm not totally on board with this. Yes, ebook readers will have an impact on how text is presented, structured and mixed in with multimedia but there will always be a place of text and books of text.In this structure, students would enroll with their "primary" institution, which would handle the disbursement of their tuition fees depending on what other courses they study. The value of, say, a second-year psychology course at Stanford would be determined by market forces, not by some central bureaucracy. This is key to the global network and feel like a utopian ideal fraught with danger. Still, I like the message it sends to the learner - "whether you like it or not you're in charge of your learning."If universities are to become institutions whose primary goal is the learning by students, not faculty, then the incentive systems will need to change. Tenure should be granted for teaching excellence and not just for a publishing record. ABSOLUTELY!The analogy is not the newspaper business, which has been weakened by the distribution of knowledge on the Internet, he notes. "We're more like health care. We're challenged by obstructive, non-market-based business models. We're also burdened by a sense that doctor knows best, or professor knows best."The article finishes with some interesting statements about the reasons nothing changes.A powerful force to change the university is the students. And sparks are flying today. A huge generational clash is emerging in our institutions. The critiques of the university from fifteen years ago were ideas in waiting — waiting for the new web and for a new generation of students who could effectively challenge the old model.Ultimately, the change will come from the students. Government talk about e-learning without really understanding what's going on but the students will demand this pedagogy. What we need is a clear choice. The model proposed here is a second stage structure. Initially what we need is a good HE example where all that's best about Learning Technologies is embraced. Someone needs to stick there head above the water to give the students a clear choice. After that market forces will take care of the rest.

(story link)This is an additional article that has spun off from Nick Carr's piece in The Atlantic Monthly, Is Google Making Us Stupid? (my post here) While I think James Bowman has done a great job with this article, I also think that Carr's article is important in that it has forced us to think more deeply about the issue of what we do. Bowman's article is really a dissection of the book which Carr used as a key resource in his article - Bauerlein's "The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future". I think what Bowman does so well is to establish a larger, richer context for Bauerlein's book. Locating both it and the author's place in a cultural context that has at times attacked the idea of the same "culture" that Bauerlein laments the demise of at the hands of YouTube, MySpace, etc. Nicely done and this should become, along with Kuhlmann's piece, a canonical referent point in looking deeply about what we do as an industry concerned with 'learning" and at least tangentially, 'education."

"It also found that the teachers who were supposed to incorporate the iPads into their...

Have you asked your supervisor, "What am I not doing that will get me fired because I missed it?" Put another way, what should you do to ensure you keep the stakeholders happy?In case you're wondering, that's the Big Boss in a black cape and that's the CTOwith a force-choke hold on his throat.One of the fun questions I've run across in my readings about Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) includes one I hadn't ever anticipated:"Think it through by analogy. The CFO is not responsible for making revenue every quarter, but if there is a big surprise, fire him. The CTO is not responsible for delivering products every quarter, but if you miss the internet or a similar technical inflection point, fire him." Indeed, I have often thought that asking what you should get fired for in a job is a great way to clarify your thinking about what is really important. Sometimes we spend a lot of time working on the wrong problems.The greatest leverage is when the project is in its earliest phases, when we are deciding on architectures in the context of market requirements and when technology choices are being made. This is where you should see the CTO. Once there is a large marching army of engineers heading off in some direction, it is pretty difficult and expensive to make changes. Much better to get things sorted out early. It is what I call, "Get ‘em while they’re young."Stuff to Get Fired AboutMisrepresenting a positive move for the organization as something not technically feasible. CTO failed to anticipate the next big thing or passed it off as something evil to leadership when other districts are clearly embracing it. Example: Failing to implement GoogleApps for Education (GAFE). Why? Well, duh, it's a cost-effective way to save your organization money for email, calendaring, etc. More importantly, it's provides everyone in the organization with a suite of tools.Example: Telling everyone that GAFE is a boondoggle, and would actually cost too much because of email archiving."What? We wanted to use all the Chromebooks but there are only 3 wireless access points in the building!" Failing to lay the infrastructure IN ADVANCE of the next big thing.Example: New technology gets purchased and distributed to campuses before an electrical capacity for buildings is done. When everyone plugs-in their new technology, the power goes out. Oops.Example: New technology gets purchased and distributed to staff, but when they all try to connect to the network, the District doesn't have enough bandwidth to access the Web. Oops."You won't get fired implementing Cisco!" CTO continues to advocate for technology that was helpful in the 20th Century.Pandering to the Superintendent. "Whatever you say, Super!" to pander to the Superintendent without making him/her aware of the issues. Example: CTO tells the Technology team that he will stop the willy-nilly purchase of technologies that lack proper vetting (e.g. automated account management, easy device management, compatibility with district network) but then secretly signs-off on the approval of the technologies.Example: Bringing in faux external evaluators to assess the organizational structure, and then using the resulting fictional document--where false data was submitted--to cut the salaries of Tech Team members s/he doesn't like, or worse, have the consultants revise the plan to make current failed practices look successful.The CTO buys the latest and greatest for select staff, hands out equipment as to win favor, but never develops a plan to ensure equity for the most important stakeholders--teachers and students.Example: CTO purchases technology (e.g. netbooks, iPads, Chromebooks, laptops, brain-chips) for deployment but doesn't work with stakeholders to develop a deployment plan. Technology arrives at campuses and people look at each other and then take it home for their home entertainment system.The CTO realizes that change is inevitable and does his best to slow it down by micro-managing and not responding to direct reports.Example: When BYOD is brought up, the CTO finds ways to change the conversation because his cronies don't want to mess with creating a separate, guest wireless network or worry about building up the infrastructure.Example: When the end-users want to bring in iPads to meet critical needs for special education children (watch this video and make sure to have tissue handy), the CTO fails to organize his Tech Team to put together a deployment plan...or, alternatively, deploys iPads with no thought as mobile device management.Example: Although differentiated content filtering is possible, the CTO refuses to fund purchase of less expensive solutions that provide finer-grained control over content filtering because YouTube should continue to be blocked (that way, the CTO doesn't have to meet with the Community).Time for a change...what is your keep my job safe list?Special thanks to TexasISD.com for featuring this blog entry on their web site!Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin's blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. 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Click here to preview the demo.Click here to preview the explanation demo.Brenda LaRose’s Workshop Proof-of-Concept PrototypeBrenda LaRose is the Training & Development Specialist from Levitt-Safety. The demo provided here is her mini-project as a participant to the Story-Based eLearning Design workshop. We thank Brenda for allowing us to share the content.From Very Dull Technical Content to an Engaging Story LessonThe small lesson is intended to help learners understand some basic concepts of the company’s policy and process on Record Retention. We present here the prototype and a video explaining the method that we employed in converting the small content into a Story-Based Lesson.The demo lesson is only available for 10 days. Please access it as soon as you can.For further references on the Story-Lesson Design, please read this blog "How to Use Questions to Immerse Learners in Your Lesson".More Demos from Last WeekIn case you have not reviewed the two demos on the 5-Step Scenario Learning Design,Technical: Too Much DowntimeSoftware: HRIS SoftwareYou may access them here.Preview Ray’s Storify Micro-IdeasThis is a summary of Twitter postings to recap some highlights of micro-ideas. Click here.Ray Jimenez, PhDVignettes Learning"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"Ray Jimenez, PhD Vignettes Learning Learn more about story and experience-based eLearning

Click here to preview the demo.Click here to preview the explanation demo.Brenda LaRose’s Workshop Proof-of-Concept PrototypeBrenda LaRose is the Training & Development Specialist from Levitt-Safety. The demo provided here is her mini-project as a participant to the Story-Based eLearning Design workshop. We thank Brenda for allowing us to share the content.From Very Dull Technical Content to an Engaging Story LessonThe small lesson is intended to help learners understand some basic concepts of the company’s policy and process on Record Retention. We present here the prototype and a video explaining the method that we employed in converting the small content into a Story-Based Lesson.The demo lesson is only available for 10 days. Please access it as soon as you can.For further references on the Story-Lesson Design, please read this blog "How to Use Questions to Immerse Learners in Your Lesson".More Demos from Last WeekIn case you have not reviewed the two demos on the 5-Step Scenario Learning Design,Technical: Too Much DowntimeSoftware: HRIS SoftwareYou may access them here.Preview Ray’s Storify Micro-IdeasThis is a summary of Twitter postings to recap some highlights of micro-ideas. Click here.Ray Jimenez, PhDVignettes Learning"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"Ray Jimenez, PhD Vignettes Learning Learn more about story and experience-based eLearning

So somebody recently asked me about a presentation on "Learning 2.0" Not the first time I'd heard this term, hell, I probably used it a couple of times myself. This time however, something really hit me. I need to read a lot more neuroscience and cog sci but I'm going out on a limb and saying that there is no such thing. I know, cause I heard him say it myself, that Tim O'Reilly, the guy who started the whole "2.0" craze (or who at least at the meeting where it was started) did not use the term to denote an iteration but a break with the prior ways things had been done. SO I really don't believe that humans are learning differently - meaning, I think we are constituting memories, adapting behavior, practicing new skills - those activities that typically make up learning from the human standpoint - in much the same way as we have for hundreds if not thousands of years. I'm talking about our internal processes. That doesn't mean that we haven't changed the mechanisms we use but the internal processes are very similar. So there is no "Learning 2.0" from the learners' view - there could well be "Instruction 2.0" or "Teaching 2.0" but think about what is really different there - those last two (and you could throw in Government 2.0, Education 2.0) address organizations and not learners and this gets to my second bothersome point about "Learning 2.0."The use of "Learning 2.0" in my mind, puts all the burden of change on the learner. If they are all 2.0 and changed then clearly we (The Organizations) don't need to do anything on our end. Think about it - Government 2.0 as a term - talks about how the organization of government needs to change. IMHO, the use of a term like "learning 2.0" seems to absolve us of addressing the hard questions of how we need to change as organizations. Forget for a moment, about using Twitter for whatever or blogs for something else - do you need to have HR at the design table? What is predominant characteristic of your organizational culture? Is your technology woefully out of date? Does your office furniture suck and imparts to people a concrete idea of how the org REALLY values it "most important asset"? How do you hire? What kind of people do you look for? Those are the dynamics that our learners are already operating in. Understand that environment. Figure out how to change that environment needs to change. Then maybe, we'll actually be getting to a "2.0" place. Let's put the burden on us and not on the learner.

Learning in 3D: Adding a New Dimension to Enterprise Learning and CollaborationFirst an apology - I was supposed to write this review weeks ago and seriously dropped the ball. That in no way should take away from the fact that I think this is actually a very important book. I actually think it is important in a way that has very little to do with any underlying technology or set of technologies. So I should add that my undergrad degree was in management. That means that anytime someone quotes Peter Drucker, I have to sit up straighter and pay attention. So when Tony and Karl quote Drucker and the idea of "rountinization" - that new technologies are most often employed early on to do old tasks faster - I latched onto that one.   Don't believe it? Really? Think about e-learning for a minute. How long have we been doing that? 10 -15 years? How many times are we still confronted with that design choice of which corner to put the "next" button in? That's awesome design evolution isn't it? Why do we still have page-turners? Because we've just automated them. Tony and Karl assert: "Trainers appear to be wrapped up in some strange form of unconscious collusion wherein their dogged adherence to the classroom paradigm has rendered them oblivious to the incredible potential that the webvolution holds to revolutionize learning for both businesses and educational institutions." Man, you ain't kidding. Not just trainers. I don't want to cast too small a net here. Schools. Colleges. The classroom has trapped a lot of people. Gary Woodill has a great piece on the history of the classroom as instructional technology. So Karl and Tony might not want me to say this, but the virtual world stuff in their book is top notch - you should read it word by word, but its not the most important thing in the book. Passages like the one below are:"In short, just as business has had to change dramatically as a result of  dynamic market economics, so too must the learning function. Critical to successfully navigating this change is recognizing that the path to strategic leverage within the firm lies in cultivating a generative learning culture. Creating a true learning organization will require significant and systemic changes to the learning function practice, not merely the automation of training processes and the digitization of training content, but a wholesale redefinition of how learning adds value to organizations."So do yourself a favor and pick up this important book and read it. Then think about what you need to do as a learning/training professional with this amazingly rich set of tools and platforms called virtual worlds and consider the challenge that Tony and Karl have so powerfully laid out - don't use these tools to create the world's best 3D "next" button. Think past classrooms. If you don't then what a waste we'll be looking at in 10 years. 

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10cCNBC Gives Financial AdviceDaily Show Full EpisodesImportant Things w/ Demetri MartinPolitical HumorJim Cramer

I was just thinking this morning about "mobile learning" - those of you that know me, know that those are air quotes - I don't consider mobile learning or "e-learning" to exist except as a way to label a product...you're not really selling learning; you're selling performance support or training or an environment...anyway.  Just thinking this morning that we always talk about "mobile learning" from the POV of the end user - they're the ones that are mobile - I don't think I've ever seen a discussion about mobile learning from the production side. I'm just wondering if this is about still thinking about the production of "learning content" coming out of a training department and not as an organizational capability. We want to spread the capability to access content across the org but what about spreading the production of content? That led me to thinking about where do we draw this line between collaboration - which we all give passionate lip service to as being important - I have this impression that collaboration is still seen as going only so far and then it hits the boundary of a training department and then it becomes the production of content...is that an issue of trust? Control?  More to consider here but needed more than 140 characters to get it out....

"Most classrooms still dominated by teachers teaching answers and students remembering them....

My husband and I have become obsessed with Naked and Afraid. In case you've missed it, it is the ultimate survival show. A man and a woman are dropped into a jungle somewhere with only one tool each--a knife, a fire starter, a length of rope--it's their choice. They have no food, no water and no clothes.  The goal of the show is that the pair must survive for 21 days in some really inhospitable locations. At the end of the 3 weeks, they must hike to the "extraction point," which is generally miles from where they've set up camp and usually involves a mountain to climb or a swamp to swim through. Remember, they have no clothes.  Each pair spends a lot of time building some kind of lean-to to sleep in and looking for fresh water and "protein." Everything is about "protein," which usually consists of bugs, lizards and if they're lucky maybe a bird or fish they've managed to catch.  They are living one day to the next, focused strictly on survival.  What fascinates me are their interactions.  A few of the pairs get along reasonably well throughout their 21 days of enforced naked togetherness. They support and coach each other and work together to locate those all-important protein and water sources. But more often than not one of them will start complaining that the other isn't "pulling his/her weight." This usually happens when one of the pair does things differently than the other person would have chosen to do.  Someone will storm off at some point. Someone will yell. Someone will cry. On more than a few occasions someone has "tapped out"--Naked-and-Afraid-Speak for dropping out before the 21 days are up. This leaves the other half of the pair on their own to finish out the 3 weeks.  Regardless of whether or not the pair gets along, the deeper into the survival experience they get, the crankier they become.  So what does all of this have to do with work?   Naked and Afraid is a portrait of people in survival mode--living in a hostile environment, lacking the tools they need to thrive. They are starving, sleep-deprived and I have to believe feeling vulnerable as hell. No shoes and no clothes in the jungle is no joke. For many people, their work is a version of this hostile jungle. OK, the food is better and they can find water. But sleep deprivation is pretty common. Lack of tools and a general sense of hostility in the environment are common too.  While occasionally the experience brings out the best in a Naked and Afraid pair, usually it brings out the worst. They become mean and petty, with lots of bickering in between treks for water. Many of them seem to battle depression and despair, sinking into lethargy as the days go on.  This can happen at work, too. It's the survival mode that brings out the dysfunctional team dynamic.  What saves Naked and Afraid pairs is knowing that they only have to do it for 21 days--there is an end in sight. Surviving to the end becomes a challenge.  But would happen if there was no end they could see? They were just in this survival mode for the foreseeable future?  I'm thinking that it wouldn't be pretty.  That's where surviving your job can be worse than Naked and Afraid. You may not be starving physically, but mentally, emotionally and spiritually, you're in a desperate search for sustenance.  And you're trapped with other people who are in survival mode, too, which brings out the worst in everyone.  Of course Naked and Afraid is designed for entertainment. It purposely looks for the drama and shows us select pieces of what happens over the 21 days.  Still, I can't help feeling that many workplaces are a version of those hostile jungles. And that many of us are just trying to survive. . .  ________________________________________________________________________ Are you in survival mode at work? Check out my online course on Recovering from the Toxic Workplace.  It can give you the tools you need to move from surviving to thriving. 

So the upshot of this article is that the NSA is joining an ongoing effort called "A-Space" within the intelligence community to share info. Its big news because the NSA is just a wee bit on the secretive side - a friend of mine who works there, never had business cards as a minor example.Beyond the fact the freaking NSA is learning how to open up and yet we still have non-classified government organizations and corporations who act like the use of these systems wold compromise their HR databases (BTW, if the use of these systems will do that - you need to hire a new IT department). Beyond that though - this line caught my eye "Political appointees and policymakers are denied access to A-Space to encourage honest collaboration among career professionals and to speed analysis." I just started wondering, if we stood up these networks in our own environments, would we have to exclude anyone to get that 'honest collaboration'? Should you be able to create your own closed enclaves within a larger corporate sphere? Maybe amongst those at your same rank or below? What about an assessment loop?I tend to think of pushing for ever more open networks so this one has me thinking a bit. Maybe some fences do make good neighbors.