Will at Work Learning

My Twitter Mosaic, My Experiment with Twitter Continues

It was November 2008 when I started using Twitter. About 120 days of Twittering. Hmmm.

Feels like years.

I've sent 233 tweets (about 2 a day). I have 256 followers. I follow 66.

I first blogged about Twitter on November 14 2008. See my first thoughts on Twitter.

Here is a mosaic of my followers:

You can get your own twitter mosaic here.

My twitter experiment continues.

It's some good, some bad.

One key is to develop strategies not to be too distracted.

I've certainly learned about some cool stuff I wouldn't otherwise know about.

What I don't know -- and can't know -- is what I've lost while I'm Twittering or following the paths that start on Twitter.

If you haven't Twittered, I recommend giving it a try for 2 or 3 months.

1. Get a twitter account.
2. Enable everyone to read your tweets (otherwise you look like a paranoid).
3. Look to see what others are writing (me for example at WillWorkLearn)
4. DON'T follow too many people yet (less than 5).
   Why? b/c following begets followers, and you will want a community (later).
5. Create some tweets each day.
6. Try to provide (a) some value (links to good info) and (b) some insight into your true self.
7. AFTER, you've done the above for a week or so, begin following others.
8. See what happens.
9. The <5 folks you originally followed (who aren't yet your followers), send them an @ message to let them know you exist...so that they may join your community (and become a follower).
10. Build some strategies to avoid too much time loss.
11. See what happens.

Siftables. New Technology for Learning?

This is cool.

Check it out.

Younger Generation NOT Good at Multitasking Either!

Generation Y, millennials, iPod Generation, better at multitasking then their elders. Yadda yadda yadda.

You've heard it all before, but is it true?

No. Probably not.

Read this great article in the Monitor on Psychology by Rebecca A. Clay.

It says:

1. People in general are not good at multitasking.
2. Young people are no better than their elders at multitasking.
3. Multitasking actually takes longer. It is NOT a time saver.
4. Learning done while multitasking is shallower learning, leading not to deep understanding (and flexible mental models) but only to an ability to regurgitate rote information.

Although I recommend the article, I do worry that some of its conclusions are drawn from too small a research base and may encompass a slight bias against the new media revolution. Still, I think we need to read these warnings because too many in our field don't see any downside to the new technologies.

Eye Movement Studies. Should we be using them for learning design?

Google has a nice blog post out on its use of eye movement research.

I remember getting a tour of Fidelity a few years ago and learning that their eye movement studies on web browsing showed that people were beginning to ignore big dark chunks of graphics because they thought they were advertisements.

My dissertation advisor, Ernie Rothkopf did a classic study (with Billington) in 1979 using eye movement data to test whether learners actually paid more attention (had more and higher-quality eye movements) toward information in the learning material that was targeted by learning objectives than to information that was not so targeted. It turned out that learning objectives worked to boost learning because they prompted learners to pay more attention to the objective-relevant material and less attention to the rest of the information.

See: Rothkopf, E. Z., & Billington, M. J. (1979). Goal-guided learning from text: Inferring a descriptive processing model from inspection times and eye movements. Journal of Educational Psychology, 71, 310-327.

To answer the question I posed above. Yes, more of us should be using eye-movement research to support us as we do e-learning design.

And by the way, as web pages change their strategies to gain our attention, our learners may change their strategies to avoid things deemed irrelevant. Moreover, as our learners see more and more of our company's e-learning, their eyes may learn where to go...In fact, a lot of them already have a well-learned capacity to find the NEXT key through a swarm of bees.

Skype 4.0 is here. And worth getting.

Skype 4.0 is here and it's worth getting. So says David Pogue: http://tinyurl.com/d45o6w.

If you don't know what Skype is, try it. It's FREE. It will let you connect with people over the internet in visual phone calls. Don't forget to dress.

Report on Learning Management Systems

Training Media Review, a hearteningly unbiased source, just releases its 2009 report on Learning Management Systems.

Click to learn more...

Virtual Conference on Teaching Science in Immersive Virtual Environments

On January 30th, there will be an online conference, costing only $65, hosted in Second Life (so you can learn about Second Life as well), and it sounds intriguing with some solid speakers/hosts.

Check it out. It's called Stepping Into Virtual Worlds.

My Twitter Genesis. Talking with God versus the Multitudes.

Just getting back from DevLearn08 I've decided to jump into the Twitter thing. You can follow me @WillWorkLearn.

Before I fully begin my Twitter experience, here's a thought experiment regarding Twitter. If I could talk to God (or some other all-knowing entity), would it be useful for me (if I'm interested in gaining knowledge) to give up a minute of that precious time to talk with the multitudes?

No it would be foolish to give up a 100% chance of gaining true knowledge in a quickly-efficient way for a lesser chance at learning from the mulititudes. I'm assuming of course that neither God nor any other true-knowledge entity is following me on Twitter. What information-gathering entity has time for that?

Of course, knowledge is not everything I might desire. I might want to feel part of a community. I might want to make friends. I might want to do an ethnographic study of The Tworld just for fun. If this all-knowing entity was a bore or decided to use its wisdom to politely keep some personal distance from me, I would be better off talking with the multitudes. But since this is a blog that focuses on Learning, not Relationships, let's get back to the knowledge-gathering question.

Since it is unlikely that some all-knowing entity will have time for me, I will have to rely on entities that will provide me with less than 100% knowledge. If I find a 99%-true-knowledge entity, wouldn't I be better off talking with it, than talking with the multitudes? Yes, I would think so in most cases, though I suppose it depends on its knowledge gaps, and how fast I need the knowledge.

So, where is the breakeven point where I'm equally likely to get true knowledge from a true-knowledge entity and from the multitudes? Is it an 80%-true knowledge entity, a 50% true-knowledge entity, or a 20%-true-knowledge entity? 

Here's the point I think I'm making: If I have access to relatively good sources of information, how do I decide to forsake those sources for the multitudes, where information may be less valid or slower to access?

In other words, would Twitters be better off reading a non-fiction book, an article, or a trusted website?

I suppose we ought to divide our knowledge needs into categories.

• Deep knowledge, gained over significant amounts of time, requiring a subtle understanding of a topic area, its contingencies, its boundary conditions.
• Shallow knowledge, gained from one or a few experiences, not weaved tightly together with a network of knowledge.

If we need deep knowledge, we ought to go to a true-knowledge entity (if we know of one). If we just need shallow knowledge, we may be just as succcessful going to the multitudes.

I don't know, what do you think oh wise one?

And then there is the matter of the time horizon. I may learn small things quick or build big understandings over time by interfacing with my multitudes.

And then there is the matter of truthiness. What risk is there in getting information from the multitudes? Probably depends on the query.

I don't know, what do you think oh wise one?

WINK.

Purchasing eLearning Tools? Consider Adobe!

I'm writing you from the eLearning Guild's annual conference. I went to a session presented by Silke Fleischer and colleagues at Adobe and was blown away by the work Adobe is doing to create products that support learning and related efforts. I then asked a number of industry thought leaders who confirmed my interpretation: Adobe is now a 500-pound Gorilla, likely to continue out-investing their competitors and thus creating better and better products for folks like us to use.

If you're considering elearning tools, you owe it to your organization to consider Adobe products. I have no financial relationship with Adobe, by the way. This is not to say that other products aren't worthy and/or do some things better than Adobe products. My thinking is this: Companies who invest in their products are often more likely to be there for you in the years to come. I've seen many clients who started using a particular tool five-to-ten years ago, and they are basically stuck with it because of their large installed base of learning courses.

Here are a few of the things that made me wake up and take notice:

1. Adobe's update cycle on Captivate seems to be shrinking, as they are aggressively moving forward in the development of Captivate 4.
2. Captivate is being used for many purposes, including the development of Podcasts, Advertising, etc.
3. You can embed a working Captivate file into Adobe connect and then have webinar or online-learning participants each interact with Captivate objects.
4. PDF files can now include fully-functional interactive images. So documents are not static anymore!!
5. Adobe is working on a new platform called AIR, which will enable the compilation of many types of objects for display and interaction.

Elliott Masie's LMS Wish List

Elliott Masie came up with a great and very insightful wish list for LMS's. Click here to access it. He even added a few suggestions in the past few days, probably based on feedback from his loyal audience.

I really like the richness that Elliott's suggestions might create for a typical LMS. Most LMS implementations are just a list of course offerings.

On the other hand, I worry about overly complicating options for users. Most workers just don't have extra time to waste. Maybe the suggestion to let users rate the courses comes into play here.

I also worry about user-generated content. It can be great, could be better than what the training folks can create, could engender more engagement, could be bottom line more effective. But we should all recognize that it is a double-edge sword. User generated content could be incorrect, could be a huge waste of time, could cause the organization to leave itself vulnerable to legal liability.

Doesn't Fix the Biggest Problem with the LMS Mentality

The biggest problem with LMS's can't be fixed with Elliott's suggestions. The biggest problem is that the whole LMS face sends a powerful hidden message that "learning" is about taking courses or accessing other learning events. This "Learning Means Sitting" LMS mentality infiltrates whole organizations.

I've seen this recently with one of my clients, a huge retailer, where their LMS has encouraged store managers and other store leaders to focus learning time on taking courses, in lieu of coaching, learning from each other, trying things out and getting feedback, encouraging store employees to take responsibility for particular areas, etc. It's not that they completely ignore these other learning opportunities; it's that the LMS focuses everyones' time and attention on courses, creating a lot of wasted effort.

To get the most from an LMS, you ought to throw away your LMS and start over. People can learn something—develop competencies/skills—from courses or from other means. A competency-management system that offers multiple means to develop oneself is ideal, where courses/events are just one option. I still haven't seen a commercial system that does this though...Most are course first designs.

Maybe I'm too over-the-top recommending that we get rid of all LMS's. I make the statement to highlight the humongous problems that the LMS mentality is causing.