Black Swan Society Blogs

Taking YouTube videos offline

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 07:40:00 +0100

I was certain I had posted about this before, but I can't seem to find the post. Apologies if I'm repeating myself!

A lot of people in this space are frustrated by the fact that access to YouTube is blocked within their organisations. I think we've satisfactorily established that, while there is an inevitable amount of dross on YouTube, there is also a wealth of material that is useful. When reputable organisations like WWF, MIT, and the OU have their own channels on YouTube, surely it is time for a paradigm shift?

But if you are still bumping your head against the firewall, there is a chink of light. If you have identified some YouTube videos relevant to the learning needs within your organisation, you can take them offline. Appropriately enough, there is a YouTube video to tell you how to do this:

Of course, this is a long way from having all of YouTube at your disposal, but it's a start. If nothing else, it will demonstrate to your learners the value of YouTube as a learning tool.

The message seems finally to have gotten through in my own home. My younger son has recently decided to take up rugby. In a rugby mad family, he was always the one person who has been uninterested in the sport. But recently, he has been playing at school and has discovered an innate talent a passion for the game. Of course, he now has a lot of catching up to do, since most of the other kids have been playing for years.

To my delight, and entirely of his own volition, he went the YouTube route. Having discussed with us the role of each positional player within the team, he decided that he was most likely to play on the flank (numbers 6 and 7, sometimes known by the older name 'wing forward'). Over the past couple of weeks, he has completely immersed himself in videos about the rules of the game in general and the role of the flank in particular. He has also taken every opportunity to watch live rugby with us, questioning us endlessly about the reasons for stoppages. Then he has had a go at explaining to us what the deal is, to see whether he is getting the right end of the stick.

The learning anorak has spawned a self-driven learner, ladies and gents. My cup runneth over.

The GPS and EPSS

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 18:07:25 +0100

It’s not unknown for me to enter my name into a drawing for something, if I don’t mind what they’re doing with it. It’s almost unknown, however, for me to actually win, but that’s actually the case a month or so ago when I put a comment on a blog prior to the MacWorld show, [...]

Peter Casebow and Jay Cross in conversation

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:48:00 +0100

Peter Casebow has recorded a skype conversation between himself and Jay Cross about learning and performance.

Don't expect slick production and such like - expect a conversation. That's what it is.

Increasingly, I would say we need to learn to regard resources like this as valid constituents of our learning experience. There isn't always time or money to repurpose material and make it shiny.

So you think social media are for socialising, huh?

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:39:00 +0100

Jane Hart, who can be relied upon to have her finger on the pulse, is building up a series of case studies of the use of social media "INTERNALLY for social and collaborative learning and/or performance and productivity improvement".

The examples (at the time of writing) include British Telecom; Pearson; BUPA; WWF; Nationwide and NASA. And the list os growing. If you'd like to add to it, please get in touch with Jane via the link on her site.

Bear with me...

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:38:00 +0100

This blog is undergoing some redesign, and may be a bit unpredictable over the next few days.

Game design strategy: content versus concept

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:39:00 +0100

My 7 year old is a gamer. He prefers what he calls "learning" games (he's not much for the "fighting" games...doesn't see the point). But recently, he's transitioned from simply playing games into making his own games and animations. He started out with Scratch and now has moved onto Alice. I can't say enough about either of these programs; if you have kids who are interested in games, they are great tools to get them started.

In helping him think about what he's designing, we've been referencing other games that he's liked playing. Two of his favorites are Big Brain Academy on the Wii and The Impossible Quiz, which he plays on his iTouch but also on the laptop. Both of these games have been highly engaging, and both of them are quiz/puzzle-based. But their design is pointedly different, and provide some insight for learning game designers.

Big Brain Academy focuses on a series of questions that fall into different categories, such as visualize or compute. The questions vary, and your performance is measured in the time it takes to complete and how many you get right. For example, in the compute category, you might be asked to pop balloons that have numbers in them, from low to high. The first few are pretty easy, but then negative numbers are introduced and players need to understand the concept of the number line in order to be successful. The game play focuses on repetition to keep increasing the number you get right, and how quickly you get them right...essentially, repetition for mastery of the concept.

The Impossible Quiz is equally, if not more addictive. The first quiz is 110 questions long, but questions are puzzles themselves and if you burn through your 3 lives, you start over from the beginning. You get the exact same questions every time. Game play is progressive...by the time you get to question 84, you can fly through the first 83 questions because you've learned the tricks and solved the puzzles. The challenge is solving the next puzzle, not repetition of the previous puzzles for mastery. The content is the challenge, and once the content is mastered, its time to move onto the next question.

So which design is better for learning? Both of these games are highly engaging and the sense of accomplishment elicited is intrinsic in the game design. But at the end of the day, my son is a master of the number line in any context, but I'm not sure he's any better as solving puzzles...he just knows the answers to The Impossible Quiz. If the learning goal is to communicate content, The Impossible Quiz design gets the job done nicely. If you want to teach a concept, focus on the design elements seen in Big Brain Academy.

For now, the 7 year old is more interested in emulating content puzzles...be on the lookout for "The Impossible Space Quiz." In the meantime, check out his portfolio on Scratch...and feel free to leave a comment if you see something you like!

(This blog post approved by Jackson Olbrish.)

Instructional versus experiential design: do you have what it takes?

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:05:00 +0100

If your instructional design experience has focused on e-learning modules or workshop development or print instruction...you don't have the skill set to design experiential learning. At least, not yet.

Instructional design typically focuses on the systematic layout of content in a way that can be easily understood, and hopefully learned, by the intended audience. Classroom curriculum development, print, e-learning...typically they present the content, explain the concepts, and allow for some kind of practice before providing some way of assessing what you learned. Most instructional design degree programs focus on this pattern, and applying it to different content. Many instructional designers become experts at breaking content down into easy-to-understand, bite-sized pieces--making difficult concepts easy to understand.

This actually makes a lot of sense, right? If something is difficult to understand, its important to simplify it so that it is understandable. This type of instruction is important, and has its place. But its not the same as experiential design.

The truth is, life is complicated. Decisions are complicated. Many times, there isn't a right or wrong answer--there are better and worse answers. There are often hidden implications in addition to the obvious ones for any decision we make. There's a reason why its called complex decision-making. Its not easy. And you really can't simplify it so that its easier to understand. We can really only get better at dealing with the complexities of the real choices we are faced with every day by practicing making those tough decisions.

Enter experiential design. Where immersive and experiential learning succeeds is in replicating realistic environments and presenting complex problems that require deeper reflection and understanding than most content or concepts presented in traditional training. To design experientially, you have to design a mirror to reality. You wouldn't want a doctor to perform surgery on you who hadn't practiced numerous times and faced a multitude of different situations before. Nor would you want to fly on a plane with a pilot who had only flown a couple times before getting in the cockpit. Why would you want a company full of employees who weren't skilled in handling the complexities of business decisions that companies face every day? No, those decisions typically aren't life or death. But they could mean the life or death of your organization.

In real life, there are very seldom heroes who always make the right choice or villains that always make the wrong ones. Most of us struggle day to day with facing tough choices, weighing all of the options, and making the best decisions we can. The potential of experiential learning design is to be able to provide practice making those decisions and seeing the potential short-term and long-term implications and outcomes before we make the decisions in real life. Call it insight. Call it reflection. Experiential design allows us to help people overcome short-sighted or narrowly-focused decisions by providing the long-term and wide-reaching implications.

Isn't that the kind of thinking and understanding we'd like to see in all of our organizations? Isn't that what we'd like to see in ourselves?

I'm looking forward to talking about this topic more at Learning Solutions, March 24-26th in Orlando, in my session with Ellen Wagner and Cammy Bean titled New Skills for Instructional Designers. And I'm thrilled to be participating in Harrisburg University's LEEF conference June 17-18th where I'll be spending 2 days hearing amazing case study examples of experiential design in simulations, games, and virtual worlds for enterprise (& I hear I'll be presenting on alternate reality games as well...).

Its time that instructional designers more specifically define their skill sets and identify their expertise. Are you designing for simplicity or complexity? In either case, do you know what it takes?

Magical augmented reality

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:27:00 +0100

How's this for a magical use of technology for kids?

The publishers say:
"This is a sneak preview of the animation that is in our new book 'What Lola Wants...Lola Gets' that uses 'Augmented Reality' which will be published on the 1st of April 2010 by Scribblers, a division of Book House. "

The name of the game in virtual worlds? Monetization.

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:58:00 +0100

I'm at GDC (Game Developer's Conference) in San Francisco this week. Learning a lot, seeing some great, and some sketchy, sessions...I've only got the Summits & Tutorials pass, so I won't be able to comment on the regular conference sessions. They did away with the Virtual Worlds summit track this year, but they keep creeping into the other sessions. Lots on social gaming and mobile, and a bit hit or miss (but I think better) line up in the Serious Games summit track.

One initial observation? Much less discussion on design, unless of course you want to learn about design for monetization. Holy cats, I know people ultimately are in this to make some money, but the emphasis on the manipulation of players to convert them into paying customers, and if you're really lucky, subscribers, has been downright depressing. The session on what social gaming can learn from virtual worlds featured "Hangout" which is evidently a new teen world, and initially, primarily targeted to girls. It reinforced every superficial stereotype of young women that the media perpetuates, and it was described with such a casualness that everyone may have missed that it was a soulless vehicle to pander to the media bias that the most important things to teenage girls are clothes and boys. SIGH.

The best session I attended so far was by Eric Ries, who talked about the ecstasy and agony of being a start up, and provided to really interesting case studies on virtual worlds start up companies There.com and IMVU. For those who don't follow these things, There.com just shut down yesterday and IMVU is one of the most successful (if you look at profitability and active users) virtual worlds. Main lesson learned? There.com followed the "rules" and it killed them...IMVU did the opposite and it's flying above the carcasses of other dying worlds.

On a positive note, met some great guys working on some virtual world stuff for enterprise that, if what they say is true, is going to turn some existing platforms on their ears. There are cool things on the horizon...stay tuned for when I can actually talk about it (after I see it and sign an agreement to what I can actually say...) but its about time that we had a browser-based platform for corporate uses that leverages other open API technologies, no?

Its a different vibe this year. It seems a lot smaller. It actually seems a lot quieter, and a bit more desperate. I learn the most at GDC of any conference I attend because seeing what is happening in the entertainment space helps shape how we are designing for corporate learning. We're bolstering our knowledge of ARGs (alternate reality games) and mobile learning through the sessions and technology featured here. But the unrelenting circle-back to "this is how you can make money" is starting to bother me. Good design in entertainment should lead to more customers...good design in training materials should lead to more informed, more educated, more highly skilled learners. Yes, tell me how you're designing for engagement...but not to get someone to push the "Pay" button.

On that wretched academic/corporate divide

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 08:43:00 +0100

I find the divide between academic learning and corporate learning unhelpful, and I'm sure I'm not alone. In his comment on my recent post, Garry Platt touched on a point that has been niggling away at me for lo, these three and a half years past.

He said:

I think one possible reason why academic reviews of mainstream ‘management’ models are not more accessed and taken account of by trainers and developers is in part to do with the style of writing used. In many cases, the majority in my experience, reviews, positive or otherwise of models or concepts are in written in a style and English which is incredibly hard to understand. This in my view merely reflects a ridiculous style that academia deems as necessary. I can absolutely see the need for precision but the unnecessary use of big words when little ones will do and sentence structures of an arid and ridiculous length just make things worse.

Now, I'm not sure I would always go along with the big words/little words argument. I recently read a headline that said 'lots of people hurt in smash' and ground my teeth. I don't see the problem with 'several people injured in collision', but perhaps that's just me... and as for the over-use of the word 'big'! Well, don't even get me started.

But I digress.

My greatest obstacle on my (now almost complete, and about time, too!) Masters' degree has been that of writing style. The following is part of a conversation that took place on my Facebook page on Sunday: I'm not sure what I can add to that, except to point out that the value and applicability of research appears to be severely hampered by the requirement for a certain type of language. Surely this defeats the purpose of research?

I think I would rather enjoy an exchange of views among corporate learning professionals in which more than the usual token handful have read the research. As it is, as soon as the subject of research is raised, you can almost hear the shutters come down with a clang. I suspect some are hard pressed not to jam their fingers in their ears and yell "LALALALALAAAAAA!!!"

On not needing to know

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:22:00 +0100

I have often bewailed the fact that I am neither fish nor fowl when it comes to the world of learning. I don't work in the field of formal education and my academic writing skills are the about on a par with my squash: I have a go at it, but I'm not terribly successful, and I haven't ever figured out what it is I need to do differently. Ergo, I am not an academic.

I work mainly with corporates in the field of workplace learning. But here, I encounter learning and development professionals without the slightest interest in the stuff that ignites the spark in my eyes and gets my hands waving.

Apparently, we workplace learning bods don't need to trouble ourselves with all that geeky theory stuff. Or so they keep telling me.

And yet they talk about six sigma and red hats and black hats. They talk about Honey and Mumford and MBTI and VAK. They talk about Kirkpatrick. They talk about management styles. They talk about the trends in presentation techniques.

What they don't seem to realise is that is the realm of theory. Theory they have often acquired umpteenth hand somewhere along the way, liked the sound of and adopted into their lexicon or practice without a second thought.

I find this irresponsible. Surely, before you impart something, and/or allow something to influence the way you teach/train/facilitate, you should explore it to make sure that it is sound? Otherwise, how is it any better than perpetuating rumour?

I was chatting to a young teacher friend last night and she was talking about the ways in which her school is attempting to engage parents in the education of their children. To get them to see that they are in fact their children's primary educators (music to my ears!) and their responsibility to their kids extends beyond dropping them off at the school gates washed and dressed each morning.

Some years ago, I had to receive therapy after a cycling accident. As we discussed my symptoms and my proposed treatment, my therapist asked if I were medically trained. When he saw my puzzled face, he estimated that at least half his patients (in an affluent town with an educated populace) would have trouble distinguishing between their liver and their kidney and saying with certainty how many they had of each.

I could cite a few more examples, but had best stop before I get into full spate. It seems to me that, in this age when almost any information you want or need is available to you at the click of a button, there are still far too many people seeing it as someone else's job to know stuff.

Well, whose job is it then? Whose job is it to know whether the content of your learning materials is sound? Whose job is it to know whether the management style model you're applying is reliable? Whose job is it to know what your children are being taught at school... and how well they're coping with it? Whose job is it to monitor the health of the only body (and mind) you're ever going to be issued?

I guess it's a symptom of my irredeemable geekhood that I simply can't understand how people can not want to know. How they can not be consumed with curiosity about the stuff that impacts their lives and the lives of people they care about.

Of course, none of us can know everything. And we certainly can't understand everything. There are times when even rampant curiosity is not going to be enough. When we want to know something, but simply don't understand it. Then you have to decide whether it's worth it to you to invest the sort of time and resources necessary to acquire that understanding. Often it isn't, so you cut your losses and move on.

But then don't present that material as fact to hordes of people and claim that it isn't your business to know the theory.

Some accumulated thoughts…

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 01:35:38 +0100

I have had my head down cranking out the manuscript for my mobile learning book. The deadline for the first draft is breathing down my neck, and I’ve been quite busy with some client work as well. The proverbial one-armed paper hanger comes to mind. However, that does not mean my mind has been idle. Far [...]

Looking back over the furrow

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 09:21:00 +0100

This morning, for some reason best known to itself (possibly due to the partnering with Ingboo) my Technorati search on my name returned 200 hits. I'm sure there are some people for whom this is a daily occurrence. I am not one of them. My name crops up only occasionally, so I had a moment of panic when I wondered what I might have done to cause such a flurry of interest.

As it turns out, none of them are new. But I found myself reading back over old posts from a number of people with whom I have I have engaged in online discourse over the past few years or so.

I also found myself rereading some of my own posts and was really glad of the title of this blog. Because, boy oh boy, I don't exactly plough a very straight furrow! But I'm not a farmer and straight furrows are not among my goals. This is a learning journey. And I have learned. A lot. I have also, and this never fails to fill my insecure little heart with joy, been a part of other people's learning journeys (for good or ill).

As far as I can remember, today is not a red letter day. It is not my anniversary as a blogger, or my x thousandth post. It's just an ordinary day on which some small thing outside of my control made me pause and look back.

If you're reading this post, you have been a part of that crooked furrow. So I'd like to thank you. Just off the top of my head, a few names that deserve special mention are (in no particular order):
Harold Jarche
Janet Clarey
Stephen Downes
Wendy Wickham
Christy Tucker
Virginia Yonkers
Tony Karrer
Don Taylor
Mark Berthelemy

Virtual hugs to you all!

On passion

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:19:00 +0100

I watched the recent men's Olympic ice hockey finals with bated breath. How Americans and Canadians managed to get through it without a coronary is beyond me.

But I was tickled by the iconic status of the Canadian netminder (read goalkeeper) Roberto Luongo. Of course, he was a local boy, playing as he does for the Vancouver Kanucks, but I doubt that that was the only explanation for the basso profundo roar of "LUUUUUU!!!" that went up every time he touched the puck. The commentators were at great pains to explain that the crowd wasn't booing, because it did sound rather like it.

The South African rugby team has a similar figure in the form of Tendai Mtawarira aka The Beast. Every time he touches the ball, the entire stand thrums as every supporter chants a throaty "BEEEEEEEEAST!!!!" As we watch him play, at a remove of several thousand kilometres, and sometimes several hours (or even days) my family does it, too. Four throats joining in with the many thousand in the stands.

These characters have inspired an astonishing level of devotion among their supporters. In an odd way, Kwame Nkrumah Acheampong had a similar effect. Apparently the crowd was still chanting "Ghana! Ghana!" an hour after his run. So we can tell that it isn't necessarily about superior skills.

I suspect that it is about passion. All these men (and I'm sure there are women like this, too) share an indomitability. They simply don't know when to quit. They. Will. Not. Be. Stopped. In this civilised age, I find it heartening that we are so ready to be won over by this level of passion. There is nothing civilised about the responses to the endeavours of these sportsmen.

In fact, let me tell you a little tale. Some years ago, I attended my sons' school sports day. All the parents were doing the usual thing of yelling their heads off for their kids and their friends' kids. Then up stepped a lad I'll call David Michaels. David had a particularly virulent form of muscular dystrophy and it was evident that this was the last year he would attend sports day on his own two feet. As the children lined up for the race, David was given a huge head start. Believe you me, there wasn't a dry eye in the place and, regardless of who they had come there to support, every child, every teacher and every parent present roared for David. Even with the head start, he wasn't able to win, but he did finish second, and the roar that went up was greater than for the rest of the events combined. David would not quit. In fact, the next year, he was back. This time in his wheelchair, being pushed by a willing volunteer.

I understand this level of passion. I'm a passionate person myself. As such, I know full well that these people have encountered naysayers, detractors and Job's comforters at every step along their journey. In order to get to where they are (even young David, who may well not even be alive any more), they will have had to refuse to buy into the 'good advice' that people have given them.

There are times when our battle on the learning front gets tiresome. There are days when we are tempted just to pack it in and go back to designing mind-numbing tunnels of back and next buttons. On those days, I reckon we could do worse than watch a brutal, uncivilised clash of sporting Titans to stir up the blood again. To remind ourselves that we might be fully clothed, erudite grown-ups on the outside, but every now and again, the inner savage needs a bit of legroom.

How's your inner savage today?

;o)

How the Snake Got Its Oil

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:12:00 +0100

There's been a flurry of activity this week on the topic of snake oil: First Harold Jarche said: "“As soon as the software vendors and marketers get hold of a good idea, they pretty well destroy it." Jane Hart weighed in with “social learning is being picked up by software vendors and marketers as the next solution-in-a-box, when it’s more of an approach and a cultural mind-set”. And today Jay Cross added to the discussion, using the word "hijack" in terms of both what happened to elearning and, now, what we're seeing with the concept of "informal learning".

I agree with my colleagues but would like to twist the conversation to why the hijacking keeps taking place. Time and time again I see Training/L & D allowing this to happen. When "learning" started happening online, Training/L & D resisted and let elearning be co-opted by vendors and IT departments. Now that "learning" is finally recognized as something that often happens informally and via social connections, Training/L&D is letting "social media" decisions be made by everyone but Training/L & D. Learning is happening everywhere in organizations, but unless it looks like "training", then Training/L &D stands aside and lets it belong to someone else.

Mark Rosenberg has used the metaphor of the railroads: They saw their business taken over by the trucking industry because they defined themselves as being in the railroad business, not the transportation business. And the training department is going to go the way of the railroads if it doesn't start seeing itself as being in the learning business, not the classroom business.

So: I really can't begrudge the vendors for acting when they see a chance, even if they end up peddling a snake-oil version of a better concept. As my work email account signature says: "Opportunities are not lost. They are just taken by others."

Hey, it’s March!

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:25:59 +0100

I've been keeping myself honest which is why it's pretty quiet on the blog. Here's a rundown of what I've been up to that's appropriate to share. No related posts.

Keeping things current

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:57:00 +0100

As you may know, I am in the process of acquiring a new passport, my previous one having expired.

I visited the space that glories in the misnomer 'website' to find out what I need to do. The website consists of one page, regardless of which of the links one selects. The only thing that changes is a line of introductory text across the top.

I printed off a checklist of everything I needed to take with me, and made sure I had it all. Two forms, completed. Check. Previous passport. Check. Two certified copies of data page of passport. Check. Two certified copies of full marriage certificate. Check. Four passport photos of an old and haggard looking woman that people will insultingly believe is me. Check. Cash to pay for passport (no other tender accepted). Check.

I joined the back of the queue outside the consulate. The man in front of me told me he had come to collect his passport. He applied for it in July and received an email yesterday to tell him it was ready for collection! Speedy service it isn't. I only hope mine is quicker than that, I have a fair amount of travelling planned.

While I was waiting, I noticed several people being sent away to a nearby photocopy service to get this or that document copied. Two thoughts occurred to me about this. First, the website informs visitors that documents can be copied on the premises. I had chosen to get mine done in advance because the cynic in me wanted to avoid the possibility of "the machine, she is broken" - heard all too often in South Africa. Second, why hadn't these palookas printed off the list as I had done, to ensure that they had everything they needed. I began to feel a little smug. Obviously, the machine, she - blow me down - was broken, and I was going to be one of the few who had prepared for this possibility. Ha!

When I finally got the front of the queue, I opened my neat envelope and handed all my tidily organised documents to the lady on the desk. She told me my application was incomplete because it did not include two certified copies of my UK permanent residence permit. I pointed to my neat list and explained that this was not a requirement for this application. Oh, but it is, apparently. The website is wrong. I would have to go around the corner to a photocopying place and have it done. I reminded her that the website clearly states that copies can be made on site. I asked if the machine, she was broken. Apparently not. Apparently the website is incorrect on this score, too.

So, like all the other 'palookas' before me, I had to go off and have some additional items copied.

Some time ago, I created an online resource for a client. Included in the deal was that I taught them how to update the site whenever any of the data it contained became obsolete. I encouraged them to use fresh, up-to-the-minute material, but to keep a weather eye out for the need to change it.

In a situation where users are dependent on the accuracy of the content of a site, it is important not to let them down.

Sadly, although I'm sure several people have tried to explain this to the South African Consulate (myself included), they seem to think that it is sufficient to simply say to a person who has gone to significant expense to be there in person (my train ticket was over £80!) that the website is wrong.

The machine, she is not the only thing that is broken!

On requirements that can no longer be met

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:04:00 +0100

Recently I reflected on actions that people continue to do, long after they add value. Today I came across a related situation.

What about requirements that can no longer be met?

I have to apply for a new passport, because my last one has expired. Among the requirements for the new passport are a copy of the data page of my passport and two copies of my original marriage certificate. Fine. I have these to hand.

The problem is that they have to be certified copies of the original.

I used to work for a local authority in the Town Clerk's department. The Town Clerk, his deputy, the Town Treasurer and his deputy were all authorised to certify documents. They carried the title Justice of the Peace (if you please). And it was something they were asked to do from time to time. Someone would pop in with a document. We would photocopy it and then certify it on the back. No problem. I even did it myself once when, for a whole day, due to poor scheduling all four of the abovementioned office-bearers were out of town and I was acting Town Clerk (at the grand old age of 23, if you don't mind!).

So today, I took my documents, originals and copies to the police station, being fairly sure that there would be someone there with the authority to certify the copies for me.

Nope.

"We are not allowed to do that any more."

Instead, it seems, the copies must be certified by a professional person (whatever that means) who knows me personally.

"Such as?" I was fairly sure this didn't include my husband. The police officer adopted a pained expression.

"Like your lawyer. Or your bank manager."

Right. Because I am constantly being sued left and right and have a lawyer on retainer. And because my bank manager knows me personally. Heck, who can even phone their bank manager in person these days? It's a good thing that I have an accountant on retainer for my business, because he has agreed to do it.

Surely if someone knows you personally, surely that brings their impartiality into question. I was under the impression that such people had to be impartial witness types. If the office of the justice of the peace has fallen away, then why is this requirement still in place? It's like being asked to turn the crank handle on a modern car before being issued with a driving licence. And what if you simply don't number such people in your circle of acquaintance. For example, what if I was Jo Bloggs the supermarket shelf-packer? I'm fairly sure Jo won't have an accountant. A pastor, then (just in case my accounting was unavailable, I had asked the officer if my pastor could do it, and she assured me that he could). But perhaps Jo Bloggs doesn't go to church. Then what?

If you are simply unable to fulfill this requirement, do you go passportless into that good night?

I can't see why they don't just have a photocopying machine at the passport office, and a person on hand to certify that piece of paper A is definitely a copy of piece of paper B, because he saw it being copied. So there.

And why are are faffing with bits of paper anyway? Why can't we just scan the damned things into the system once and for all and be done with it? So that next time I go there, they still have a copy of my marriage certificate and the data page of my expired passport on record.

Ugh. Now I have to go to London tomorrow and stand in an interminable queue. And the passport might still take so long to be issued that I am unable to make it to eLearning Africa in Zambia at the end of May.

Faff. Faff. Faff.

Second Life Viewer 2...wow

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 15:27:00 +0100

If you've ever heard me speak about virtual worlds for learning, you've heard my mix of love and hate for Second Life. I love the openness, I love the freedom, I love the complexity...but it made it too complicated for most users. Navigation wasn't intuitive. Attrition rates after the first log in were atrocious. It didn't integrate with other technologies well. Frankly, for most people, it was just too hard.

I have friends in the virtual worlds industry who stood by Second Life. To be honest, I wasn't sure Linden Labs "got" that the same thing that made Second Life great was also the thing that was holding it back.

But yesterday, I tried out Viewer 2.

Yeah, here's where I take some of that back.

Sure, its still Second Life, with the prims and the rezzing. And no, the new viewer didn't magically fix security concerns or the (in my estimation, silly) worry about inappropriate content. But Viewer 2 tackles the usability issues head on, and makes Second Life a lot more digestible for a new user...and that, my friends, has been the biggest obstacle to virtual world adoption.

I don't want to detail all of the new features...you can find the write up here. I will say that little features like streamlined navigation, the improved search functionality, and the simplified menus help overcome a lot of the issues that new users faced in the previous interface. The embeddable media (audio! video! Flash!) makes me swoon. But the single biggest improvement in Viewer 2? It works like a web page. Its intuitive with minimal poking around. Its better designed for user experience.

And that's what makes all the difference. Game changer? Maybe. Gauntlet thrown? Definitely.

Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 09:44:00 +0100

Meet my favourite 2010 Olympian, a Ghanaian, born in Scotland, an alumnus of my husband's alma mater in South Africa, and now living not far from us in England. I met Kwame at a church meeting in Milton Keynes a couple of years ago and was touched by his ambition. This is a man who seeks to break of the stereotypical mould. For example, he represented Ghana in a tennis tournament in years gone by.

His journey to the slalom and giant slalom events in Whistler has been a tough one. There have been times that he has had to sleep in his freezing van in Canada, because of a lack of sponsorship. Good Samaritans have since stepped forward to help out, it seems, and he has been provided with lodgings.

I love stories like this!

Join Kwame's fan page on Facebook to get an idea of the inspiration he has given to so many ordinary people.

eLearning Learning

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 01:38:46 +0100

Just to note that Learnlets is now part of the blogs recorded in Tony Karrer’s eLearning Learning. Tony’s made an architecture that allows blogs and articles on a particular topic to be aggregated and searched. As part of a Personal Learning Network for those in elearning, such a searchable repository is quite useful. I used it [...]

#lrnchat Europe Begins 25 Feb at 4:30pm GMT

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:34:00 +0100

I'm incredibly excited that a second #lrnchat is launching this week that both brings in the European Union in an hour that they can easily enjoy, and at the same time provides a weekday time to participate for the US. Related posts:

#lrnchat

RIP Training Magazine

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 19:12:00 +0100

I apologize for the length of this, but eulogies bring out the wordiness in me. Tuesday morning brought the sad, but not surprising, news that 41-year-old Training Magazine will cease publication with its March 2010 issue. From my view, the magazine had been in a downward spiral since its sale by Lakewood Publications to VNU Business Media and then again to Nielsen Business Media. Every sale saw new staff, less and less knowledgeable about (or, as far as I could tell, interested in) workplace training and learning. The struggle was evident: Those who subscribed to the print edition over the past few years can attest to its shrinkage from magazine to something more akin to newsletter. I don't know how it held on for as long as it did.

Since Tuesday's news many people, familiar with my 10-year participation as a member of the "In Print" book review column team and my other sundry contributions, have reached out to express surprise, conjecture about the reasons for the closing, and sympathy for the loss of work. Magazine work is just an add-on for me; I am among the fortunate in the training/learning business to have good, full-time employment complete with retirement plan and health insurance. The shutdown will have no effect on my livelihood, but I am sad to say some friends are now out of work. I hope that among the many supporters I've heard from will be someone in a position to help these folks find new employment.

I owe Training Magazine a great deal. As a new trainer, armed with an undergraduate English degree and assigned to a training department led by a former registered nurse who broke out in hives when she had to speak in public (no, I am not kidding), I had no one to help me learn how to do this. My coworkers taught canned programs like CPR and First Aid, and all came from the third-grade-teacher approach to training adults, so weren't much help when I was assigned things like developing supervisory training. I was fortunate that we had an office subscription to Training (and I'm pretty sure I'm the only one there who read it). Jack Gordon and Ron Zemke were still in the house then, and the magazine was about training. It's the first place I heard about things like adult learning theory, ISD, and ADDIE; it's the first place I saw someone question venerated training idols like the MBTI; it's where I first saw someone try to pull back the curtain on high-priced consultants peddling "packages" (as I recall, this was a piece titled "Ship of Charlatans"). The magazine then had heart and a sense of humor: One of the funniest things I've ever read was a piece by Zemke (or was it Gordon?) about frustrations with personal computers. Among the points made: "When I am driving along at 60 miles and hour and the car sounds funny, I don't just shut the ignition off." The help Training provided in the early days of my career is so significant that I discussed it in my doctoral dissertation.

Back then the magazine had a final page, "My Turn", open to 1000-word contributions from readers. The first national piece I ever published was a "My Turn" column on problems with customer service training (the gist: Smiling does not make make up for utter incompetence). I did a couple of these, and when the magazine was looking for people to staff its new book review column, editor Martin Delahoussaye recruited me to help. The book review column was a great gig, giving me piles of new books every year and putting my name and picture in a national publication every month. Martin left the magazine for Pfeiffer publications, where he became the push behind my first book. And when that book came out in 2005, new Training editor Holly Dolezalek ran a feature article about it, along with a banner on the magazine's cover.

Apart from the magazine proper, I want to note that I especially loved the Training conferences (ending with a year: "Training 2004", 2005, and so on) and the people who organized them! Leah Nelson, Julie Groshens, and Kris Stokes were fun to work with, competent at what they did, and adept at turning a lot of spinning plates into a well-oiled machine. In addition to giving me a lot of exposure and letting me try new things, the events are where I met in person people like Susan Boyd, Thiagi, Bob Mosher, Patti Shank, The Hortons, and my dear friend and valued colleague Jennifer Hofmann. These gigs, in turn, led to Training's online certificate programs and webinar work. (Those are still on, by the way, as is the online community.)

The magazine seemed to slip away under its latest ownership. The field was changing, with much emphasis shifting from training in specific to learning in general, but that wasn't all. Content seemed less and less focused on anything related to training and learning, some of the freelance contributors clearly knew little about what they were discussing, and there seemed to be a widening disconnect between the interests of readers, who paid for the subscriptions, and the content catered to the advertisers, who paid the big bucks. I was rarely sent anything training-related to review. (Heck , they wouldn't even review my books. I mean, seriously, what's a girl gotta do?) In earlier years I reviewed works by people like Mark Rosenberg, Mel Silberman, Alison Rossett, Patti Shank, and Michael Allen. Along the way there were occasional leadership books, including the dreaded Little Animal or Dairy Product Metaphors, but the books mostly were one way or another tied to learning. The last book I read for Training was something called Jenga, which was really quite interesting -- all about getting a product manufactured, trademarked, and distributed for sale -- but had not one thing to do with training or workplace learning. Yes, in considering the magazine's demise, there were lots of red flags. While I don't know all the details, I do know that the problems weren't all connected to the economy.

I'm sad to see Training go and am sure other industry publications are taking heed. It has brought me back to the reality that the shift from training to learning, and the proliferation of content via free Web 2.0 means, are going to bring big changes for all of us, some of them perhaps painful.

I will be back in print soon in another publication, likely with both book reviews as well as a new training/learning related column, so stay tuned for news of that. Thanks to all who have expressed their interest and concern, and reached out with offers of new opportunities.

Proliferating Portals

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:02:52 +0100

After my last blog post, a commenter asked a pertinent question: Many organizations/companies have multiple intranets, wiki sites, and so forth, often making it difficult for employees to know where to go when they want an answer or more information. Let’s say you are the Director of a company’s Education/Training department and you want to move [...]

Formalizing informal learning?

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 15:03:04 +0100

The Entreprise Collaborative has a new question, asking whether we can formalize informal learning. I have to say, I don’t get the question. That is, I understand what they’re asking, and like the response they give, but I really think it’s the wrong question. To me, it’s not about formalizing informal learning so much as explicitly [...]

Will Thalheimer on learning styles

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:04:00 +0100

If you've been reading this blog for a while, it can't have escaped your notice that I am not an adherent of the concept of learning styles. I have written several blog posts and articles on the subject (I won't bore you by linking to them).

Like Donald Clark (to whom thanks for the pointer) I hope that this blog post from Will Thalheimer, and the research it cites will finally begin to draw a curtain on this silliness.

There is... a great gap from... heterogeneous responses to instructional manipulations—whose reality we do not dispute—to the notion that presently available taxonomies of student types offer any valid help in deciding what kind of instruction to offer each individual.

Enough now.

Happy anniversary, Madiba

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:30:00 +0100

Just before midnight rolls around and brings an end to this red letter day, I would like to just mark the fact that 11 February 2010 is the twentieth anniversary of Nelson Mandela's release from prison.

A very important day in the history of South Africa and - arguably - the world.

That Buzzing Sound

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:16:20 +0100

Google will be able to tell you search results not just in terms of web content that may answer your query, but in terms of people you're connected to (or are connected through other people) who can answer your query. Related posts:

On being knocked off kilter... by Hitler

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 14:42:00 +0100

Be informed that comment moderation is in place on this blog and I will not allow this post to be the springboard for the expression of anti-semetism, neo-nazism or holocaust denialism. Any such comments will not be published.

This post has been very hard to write. This has been an uncomfortable learning experience for me, and I am assailed with uncertainty as to the reactions it will garner. I implore you not to misinterpret it.

Last night I watched a documentary called Hitler's Private World (see part 1 here). It made me horribly uncomfortable. Not because it revealed what a monster he was. I already knew that bit, and was enormously comfortable with it. I was happy to think of Adolf Hitler as a terse, inconsiderate man. If I thought about his personal relationships at all, it was to assume that he was cold and distant. Unfeeling. A psychopath, even.

I was not prepared to see him as warm and affectionate. I was not prepared to see him as someone who adored children. I was not prepared to see him as someone who cared about the environment. Someone who saw the potential for user-generated content.

I was happy only to know that he was responsible for the mass slaughter of umpteen million so-called undesirables (Jews, Soviet PoWs, Gypsies/Romanies, Poles, left wing political prisoners, homosexuals, the disabled, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholic clergy, eastern European intellectuals, etc.) and then to welsh out of facing up to the consequences of his appalling actions by taking his own life.

Don't get me wrong... the documentary was not a pro-Hitler rant, and I am not about to join the ranks of those who think he was 'just misunderstood'.

The documentary was made using home movie material overdubbed with dialogue as ascertained by automated lipreading technology. It showed Hitler flirting with Eva Braun, gossipping about the likes of Goering and Himmler, playing happily with children, affectionately commending young soldiers.

It forced me to see additional dimensions to a man I prefer to think of in only one dimension... and it made me very squirm because, as the narrator pointed out, if this man had the capacity to care about the things I care about, to interact with people as I do, then perhaps he is not as different from me as I would prefer to think. On some subconscious level, I think I had ascribed him to a different species, but material such as was shown last night forces me to acknowledge that this is not the case.

Here was a man who grieved to see trees being chopped down. A man who wanted every German family to have a cine camera to record history from their own perspective. A man who could not bring himself to eat the flesh of a living creature. A man who adored children... something which showed plainly on his face as he interacted with them. A man who patted the young members of the Hitler youth with what seemed to be genuine affection as he inspected their ranks. A man frustrated by the effects of Parkinson's disease.

In some of the footage, perhaps with the help of the suggestive voice of the narrator, it was possible to see him psyching himself up, putting on the role of the orator at the hands of a (Jewish, as irony would have it) spin doctor.

Where was the monster?

Of course, his monstrous legacy remains and speaks for itself, but in his private life, he was disturbingly ordinary. I am struggling to find space in my mind for this new information.

I encourage you to watch the footage yourself. I'd be interested to hear how you respond to it.

Things my Granny knew

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 09:04:00 +0100

Have you heard this story? It's probably an urban legend, but it amply demonstrates a point:

A new husband was adoringly watching his young wife cook the Sunday roast. He noticed that she cut a slice off the end of the roast and carefully placed it on top of the joint before popping it into the oven. He asked her why she did that. His wife looked at him in puzzlement and said, "That's how you cook a roast. That's what my Mom always does." The young man expressed surprise, explaining that he had never seen it done that way before (he carefully did not say that his own mother didn't do it that way). The wife gave it some thought and realised that she had no idea why her Mom did it that way, just that it was what she did.

So she phoned her mother.

The mother explained that that was how one cooked a roast. Her own mother had always done it that way. "But why?" asked her daughter. The mother realised she didn't know the answer to this question, just that this was how it was done.

So she phoned her mother.

The grandmother was puzzled for a moment. She had no recollection of doing any such thing and could see no reason why anyone would handle a roast in this way. But as they spoke, the middle aged woman and her elderly mother, the light dawned. "Oh!" explained the old lady, "I remember! I had five children, so I had to buy a big joint. The problem was that I had a rather small oven and a small roasting pan, and the joint was too long to fit, so I used to take a slice off the end and put it on top. But, goodness! As soon as I got a bigger oven, I stopped doing that."

So there are times when we do things a certain way because 'this is the way its always been done', without stopping to question whether this is the best way.

But there are some things my Granny knew.

I still make tea the way my Granny taught me. As the eldest grandchild, it fell to me to make the morning tea when the family was all together in the holidays. I was well-schooled. You use fresh water every time - you don't just reboil the water that's in the kettle. You use a fairly large teapot, to give the tea space to move. You heat the teapot before using it. You put the tea into the pot before adding the water - you do NOT add the tea to the already poured water. And, when you pour the water into the teapot, it must be absolutely boiling - it must not have been allowed even a moment to go off the boil. Tea can be served with or without milk (note: NOT cream) and sugar or lemon. The one rule I break is that I use mugs instead of cups... only because I like a generous portion of tea. My ludicrously small kitchen does, however, include a few teacups, although I regret they are not paper-thin porcelain.

People who take real pleasure in a cup of tea - usually those of advanced years - often remark that I make a 'nice cup of tea'. My Granny would be proud.

I checked. There are reasons for each of those steps, and they still apply.

My Gran also boiled eggs in a specific way... and I have only just learned why. She used to bring the water to boil in a saucepan, then she would add a generous amount of salt, and gently pop the (room temperature) egg(s) into the water. If she was boiling more than one egg, she would write numbers on the eggs with a pencil and place them into the water in numerical order, and remove them in the same order.

I did what the two younger ladies in my first story failed to do. I thought about it and could see no reason to do it this way. I found my own way to boil eggs to my liking.

I keep my eggs in the fridge, because we eat fewer of them nowadays than in my Gran's day, and so need to store them there to keep them fresh. Taking an egg from the fridge and putting it into boiling water is a sure-fire way of cracking the shell. Now the salt in the water is supposed to help congeal the white, so that it does little more than bulge out a bit from the crack. But I have found that all this can be avoided if you just pop the egg into cold water with salt, and then bring it to the boil. Once it has come to the boil, 3 minutes will give you a soft yolk and 5 a hard yolk. Job done.

But wait. There's a thing my Gran used to do with boiled eggs when she was preparing finger snacks that involved the eggs being cut in half lengthwise, the yolks being removed and mixed with a few other ingredients and then piped back into the egg whites. Apparently (and this is the bit I only learned when speaking to my aunt during my recent trip back to South Africa), if you put the egg into already boiling water, the yolk stays in the middle of the egg! I have to confess that my yolks are seldom, if ever, in the middle of the egg, which has meant that my attempts to make my Gran's egg thingy have always looked somewhat amateurish.

But now that I know... just you wait until the next time I am asked to prepare finger food for a church do! I shall produce a perfect batch of my Gran's egg snacks... and even though she's been gone for 23 years, I shall no doubt shed a sentimental little tear as I picture her approving smile at my efforts.

Some things my Granny just knew.

Other Ways to Participate in #lrnchat

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 12:17:10 +0100

There's a volunteer effort to produce weekly summaries of #lrnchat events -- valuable opportunity for lurkers and observers of #lrnchat to participate and contribute to the community. Related posts:

#lrnchat

Writing and the 4C’s of Mobile

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:03:16 +0100

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m writing a book on mobile learning. My only previous experience was writing Engaging Learning, where the prose practically exploded from my fingers. This time is different. The prose actually does flow quite easily from my fingers, but I find myself restructuring more often than last time. This is a bigger topic, [...]

Twitter v IM: a micro-reflection

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:08:00 +0100

Donald Clark shared via his Facebook status that "while 7 out of 10 teens use social networking websites like Facebook, only 1 in 12 teens use Twitter - Pew Internet and American Life Project - survey middle of last year 12-17 year olds."

I located said report and found it interesting reading. You might, too, if your life includes teenagers.

One caveat I found quite telling was that "the question wording for teens is quite different from how the question was posed to adults so the results are not strictly comparable."

That said, it seems that only 8% of online American teens use Twitter, while the figure for adults is 19%. It should be noted, however, that the figure for adults varies hugely across different age bands, showing a steady decline from the 37% of 18-24 year olds to just 4% of those over the age 65. So it seems that between their 17th and 18th birthdays, American teenagers experience the sudden urge to make the shift to Twitter. I wonder why? The report suggests that it "may be partially due to our question wording capturing status updates on social networking sites."

But enough of that, I wanted to focus on the 'only 8% of all teens' bit.

My own teenagers are avid users of instant messaging and have been for several years, now. Their usage patterns would not be supported by Twitter.

For example:

They use a lot of emoticons
They use extensive font formatting
They frequently use more than 140 characters per message
They conduct huge numbers of 1:1 conversations simultaneously, sharing private thoughts they would never dream of sharing in a single, multi-user stream (connected in parallel, rather than in series?)
They change their user names often, using these as a mini status to reflect their mood, their (frequently) changing romantic status or a significant event in their lives
They use web cams as part of their conversations (and some parents would be appalled to know some of the uses to which their teenagers put these cameras!)

Of course, this is just a single snapshot, based on my observations of my own sons and their friends, and does not constitute research. But I throw my snapshot into the pool to be aggregated with the rest of the fragments.

Graeme Duncan suggests (on Donald's FB page) "My hypothesis is kids use these media as communication tools but like it to be network building and relationship building. Twitter is a broadcast media not a two way communication channel whilst FB, MSN, etc etc are profile builders and also communication channels."

I have to say that I use Twitter to engage in conversations with people. Many of my messages start with @someone-or-other. But Donald has a view on that, too, to wit: "Spot on Graeme - Twitter is boomeresque (new word!) in that it plays to our need to either receive or transmit, not share and engage in dialogue. Even on Facebook, we're the exception to the rule -far too many boomers simply post their own entries and don't respond - you two [that would be Graeme and me] are very much the exceptions."

I'm trying to decide whether to forgive him for calling me a "boomer". I'm too young for that label, and he should know it ;o)

A fragemented conversation.

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 09:12:00 +0100

I confess, last night was my first conscious exposure to #lrnchat on Twitter. The theme was online learning myths. Jane Hart has captured the event nicely with this post.

It is quite a challenge to capture a cogent thought in just 140 characters! Fortunately a myth can usually be expressed quite succinctly.

Next week's theme is confessions of trainers and learners. That might be less conducive to brevity.

It's worth noting that I came to know about #lrnchat via Jane's Facebook status. It was updating with her contributions to the conversation and Donald Clark and I began to respond to her updates on Facebook. Jane invited us to join the conversation on Twitter. I did, briefly, between the various things and people that clamour for my attention of an evening.

This ties in with a question Wendy Wickham asked on Facebook about blogging:

"Question for the long-time edubloggers - is it just me or are we all getting quieter? How frequently are you posting these days?"

My response was: "I don't blog as much as I used to. The conversation appears to have moved elsewhere... like here [Facebook], for instance!"
Harold Jarche's response included: "Maybe life-streaming is replacing blogging for some people, but it's still a key part of my online professional communications and learning."
Stephen Downes (after pointing out that he wasn't getting any quieter, which is true) observed: "a lot of the 'connector posts' (I link to you, you link to me, we form a chain of conversation) have moved to Twitter and Facebook, etc. Still a lot of good blog posts out there, a lot of good commentary, but they aren't tightly linked the way they used to be."

One thing I've noticed is that threads of the same conversation run through a variety of spaces. As happened with the whole lrnchat thing, I come across fragments of a conversation in one space and follow the trail to where the main body is taking place. Once there, I find and follow links to all manner of tendrils in a host of other places.

Sometimes the links are to contributions I would not have related to the subject at hand (in fact it is unlikely that the original contributor would have done so, either, in some cases), until the connection was identified by another participant. In those situations, it's a little like looking at one of those optical illusion images and only being able to see one perspective, until someone says, "No look. That's her cheek there, and that's a feather in her hair. And she's kind of looking away from you..." Suddenly it all becomes clear and you have an "Ooooh, yeah - I see it now" moment.

But the conversation is everywhere. In all the spaces at once. If I were to suddenly stop twittering or facebooking or reading blogs, I feel as if I would stand to lose a valuable strand. So, even though I have been quieter here than in the past, I feel no less engaged in the conversation.

What is your observation?

I’m on Voice of America

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 23:54:49 +0100

I'm going to be on Voice of America Friday, February 5 at 3pm Eastern (2pm Central) as a panelist discussing Economic Fractal Patterns, hosted by Pravir Malik. No related posts.

Having fun with branding

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:35:00 +0100

A South African airline called Kulula has apparently rebranded its aeroplanes, settling on an 'aeroplane for dummies' approach. This is the sort of thing that could so easily be a hoax, so I've done a bit of background searching and can't confirm or refute the story.

I hope to goodness it's true. Who wouldn't? Just have a look at the article and the images. Isn't the whole thing delightfully tongue in cheek? It puts me in mind of a t-shirt I once saw on a young guy in our church. On the back, it bore the words 'Arse' and 'Elbow', with arrows pointing in the appropriate directions.

I hope you are inspired and/or tickled by this as much as I was.

Internet addiction and mental illness

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:54:00 +0100

The free London paper ran a front page article today on the relationship between Internet addiction and mental illness, as researched by Dr Catriona Morrison.

If people are addicted, it can affect a person’s ability to perform at work or they may be failing to do chores so they can go online.’

However, she admitted more work needed to be done to establish whether addiction or mental illness comes first.

We all know that it is possible to become addicted to things that are otherwise pretty harmless, even healthy. But once things have reached addiction levels, it is a different matter entirely. I once saw a man selling his own children's toys on the pavement in order to get money for the next bottle. In the throes of addiction, people will contravene even their own codes of decency.

The thing is, when you're addicted to something, the only option seems to be a complete break. An alcoholic will never have the control necessary to become an occasional social drinker.

So what hope is there for an Internet addict? Cutting off all usage of the Internet would be akin to a voluntary imposition of illiteracy and near-hermitage.

Is a puzzlement.

First Life - a different take

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:50:00 +0100

Listening to a Training Magazine Network recording of Allison Rossett talking about what e-learning is and isn't, I came across this YouTube video. Good for a chortle.

Have you considered First Life for your business meetings, yet? ;o)

Why you should be Learning in 3D - Blog Tour Stop

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:45:00 +0100

It doesn't seem all that long ago that I got a call from Dr. Karl Kapp asking me if I'd mind being interviewed for his and Dr. Tony O'Driscoll's new book on virtual worlds for learning. When he told me that he wanted to talk to me about the future of virtual worlds, I have to admit, I was both excited and skeptical. Excited to be asked to talk about my grand visions of the potential of this technology I had been immersed in for the last few years, that I've tried to understand from the inside out. Skeptical that the enormity of the change that I envision, that what I really see as the future of virtual worlds, would reach far beyond what would be captured in this book. I had a real fear that after talking to me, Karl might just decide that my fanatical rantings were a bit of a bridge too far for what they wanted to achieve in writing what I knew would be the theoretical foundational text for virtual worlds for learning.

A few months later, I received the chapters I was quoted in for review. I was truly just scared to look. Again, I was caught in the delicate balance of hoping I didn't sound crazy and hoping that the book was portraying the future big enough. After doing the vanity scan, I got brave and read the preview chapters, Chapter 8: Steps to Successful Enterprise Adoption, and Chapter 10: Back to the Future.

There was good news on two fronts. I didn't sound crazy. I sounded like I was in good company.

What Karl and Tony have provided with Learning in 3D is the foundation for how learning in immersive environments happens, how different these learning environments and experiences are from other environments, and what that means to organizational learning--and structure. When people ask me where they should get started to learn about virtual worlds, I've never had a great answer...links to a variety of vendor sites, to blogs and to some of the people I follow on Twitter. Now I have an answer. This book is the first step.

What you might be surprised to learn is that one of my favorite sections of the book is actually Chapter 7: Overcoming Being Addled by ADDIE (#lrnchat rule: DRINK!). From my perspective, and granted its a biased one, one of the major barriers to successful immersive learning implementations is the lack of instructional designers who can effectively design appropriate content for these new environments. Kudos to Karl and Tony for not only acknowledging this, but beginning to tie together the granddaddy of instructional design process models with the skills and perspective of design needed for these new learning environments.

I'm honored and thrilled to have in some small way contributed to this book because, yes, they painted the big picture. They provided the rationale and issued the imperative. Learning in 3D provides the necessary background to understand not only why immersive learning environments are important, but the risk of not including them as part of your corporate learning strategy. The future is immersive, the future is contextualized, the future is empowered and engaged regardless of your physical location. The future of learning (at least part of it) is in 3D.

Buy your copy today and use the code L3D1 for a 20% discount.
Then check out the wiki or the Facebook fan page.

Twenty years ago today

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 11:41:00 +0100

It was on this day in 1990 that President FW de Klerk announced the decision to release Nelson Mandela from prison. His actual release date was 11 February 1990. So, once the decision had been announced, the wheels of bureaucracy moved comparatively quickly.

During the next few years, the apartheid regime was systematically dismantled in South Africa and, in 1993, Mandela and de Klerk jointly received the Noble Peace Prize in recognition of the role they had played in this process.

On 27 April 1994, the first fully democratic election took place in the country. For the first time, every adult in the country had the right to vote. 20 million South Africans exercised this right. Many of them standing patiently for hours due to the logistical delays in rural areas.

Not a drop of blood was shed.

It is poignant to realise that Nelson Mandela was voting for the very first time in the election that saw him become President.