Learn to Adapt

• Instruction eLearning 2.0 and Quality : eLearning Technology - Tony Karrer resonds to comments regarding the "quality" of content being shared using Web 2.o tools (wikis, blogs) for learning. He's spot on in his response. I deal with the same resistance to change. The final accounting is "does performance improve?
• Even Poor Kids Are Social Network Savvy: Scientific American Podcast - Closing the "digital divide"? Study from the University of Minnesota says these days even the least privileged kids have profiles on MySpace and Facebook. And they’re on the internet all the time.
• Our Brains on Marketing: Scans Show Why We Like New Things: Scientific American - "We know not to judge a book by its cover—but new research shows that may be exactly what we do. Scientists have discovered that novel objects perk up the reward system of our brains"
• The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete - Chris Anderson postulates: "The new availability of huge amounts of data, along with the statistical tools to crunch these numbers, offers a whole new way of understanding the world." A transformational theory…
• It’s Not What You Know, It’s Who You Know: Work in the Information Age - Ethnographic research on personal social networks in the workplace, arguing that traditional institutional resources are being replaced by resources that workers mine from their own networks.
• SocialLearn: Bridging the Gap Between Web 2.0 and Higher Education at e-Literate - Martin Weller ponders: "when learners have been accustomed to very facilitative, … and adaptive tools both for learning and socialising, why will they accept standardised, unintuitive, clumsy and out of date tools in formal education?

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These are my links for March 15th through March 17th:

• Digg, Wikipedia, and the Myth of Web 2.0 Democracy. - "At both Digg and Wikipedia, small groups of users have outsized authority." No one ever expected it to be truly democratic, but it does give pause as to who is deciding what learning we get - probably still better than the norm.
• Is User-Generated Content Out? | Newsweek Technology | Newsweek.com - "The individual user has been king on the Internet, but the pendulum seems to be swinging back toward edited information vetted by professionals." The trend continues. I still believe their is a huge "curator" role for editors to play.
• Where Every Ad Knows Your Name - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog - Loise Story of the New York Times asks an insightful question that reveals just how far we have come in "personalizing" the Web. It certainly raises privacy issues, but it also open the possibility of tailored content and delivery.

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These are my links for February 27th:

• 12 Screencasting Tools For Creating Video Tutorials - Its been around for ages, but you can't argue with quick, simple, and effective. If you have to teach (or better yet EPSS) folks computer applications, screencasting is effective and cheap. This great lists includes FREE tools (for great ROI).
• Visualizing Information for Advocacy: An Introduction to Information Design | Tactical Technology Collective - Presentation is everything: "This project aims to raise awareness, introduce concepts, and promote good practice in information design – a powerful tool for advocacy, outreach, research, organization and education."
• Extend Your Brain With Evernote - This isn't open to the public yet, but it is another example of how Internet (Web) technology is changing the way we learn and remember. Einstein was joking when he said "I never remember anything I can lookup". Still a joke?

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These are my links for February 13th through February 14th:

• The Learning Circuits Blog: Instructional Design - If - When - How Much - A great discussion starter from Tony Kareer that explores the spectrum of instructional design (ID) strategies that can be used. I strongly agree that ID must be much more flexible than the ADDIE model would have us believe.
• Harold Jarche : Strategies for online collaboration » The future of learning is DIY - A brief reflection on the growth of "do it yourself" learning that has evolved as the Web has grown. Great opener: "If someone asks me what’s the best learning management system, my initial response is - Google."
• Evolution and Scientific Literature: Towards a Decentralized Adaptive Web - "As our systems grow more sophisticated, we will see applications that support not just links between authors and papers but relationships between users and information repositories, and users and communities."
• Learning from E-Databases in an E-Data World (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE CONNECT - A broad article that reviews the poor state of data gathering and discoverability on the Web. It frames a core concern with using the Web as a learning platform: that the data available is often uncaptured or not easily discoverable.
• Enterprise 2.0 » Blog Archive » The Enterprise 2.0 Oscars - A wonderful page of Enterprise 2.0 references as Niall Cook nominates the most influential people on the topic of "How social software will change the future of work."

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