A Natural Role for e-Learning Professionals?

John Lawlor says he knows how to save the world. See the extra-long post in Clippings and ask yourself if that doesn't sound like the classic role for training/e-Learning/EPSS.

4:27:05 PM    

Support for enclosures in Radio.

Radio's Preferences now allow you to specify where to store downloaded enclosures. This addition to Radio makes it a much more suitable tool for delivering e-Learning, marketing videos, and other multimedia to augment your message.

9:55:35 AM    

More on What's Working.

And an answer to my question earlier. (An answer I like, by the way -- thanks!) This is similar to the way that I would use weblogs in online curricula for managers, for example.

What's Working (Con't). Bill Brandon responds to my post yesterday asking:

If we're talking about children in primary school, or even in high school, will the long-term outcomes be better if they learn to interact directly with each other, or if they learn to interact by commenting on each other's weblog entries (assuming that they find the latter as engaging as dealing with other kids, an assumption I very much doubt would be valid). If my outcome is for students to learn that learning does not happen in isolation, then wouldn't it make more sense to design a curriculum around collaboration, cooperation, and construction of new knowledge, and have weblogs play a supporting role, rather than being the primary focus?

11:50:36 AM    

What's Working, Part 2

James Farmer responds to the responses:

Hang on there....

Will posts a good collection of comments on What's Working and gives his own, extremeley constructive, perspective...  well worth printing for part III (actually come to think of it all the comment and thought on this has been amazing, pretty special post-publication network :o):

"I'm beginning to believe even more strongly that the eventual power of Web logs in education will be realized in the longer-term learning portfolio form rather than in the daily posting of assignments or simple reflections. But I would argue again that we've only just started down this road. And to be honest, I think there is much about Web log use in schools that is already working. We're making connections for our kids, we're providing them with an audience they never had before. We're showing them more and more ways in which writing matters. And, whether we're doing it conciously or not, we're teaching them that learning doesn't happen in isolation, that it is a process, and that bits of the process that may seem unrelated really do have relevance to one another"  [Weblogg-ed News]

[incorporated subversion]

... which leads me to ask, again, doesn't it all depend on the educational outcome you have in mind? There are some outcomes for which a weblog might be perfectly appropriate -- one student, dealing with a computer information system to find resources, comment on them, and reflect. But how well does weblogging, a solitary activity, support outcomes in which it is essential to involve other people and to leverage their experience? It is a challenge to carry on a distributed dialog via blog, and not everyone is up to it. The pace is different from ordinary conversation, the social conventions (if I can call them that) are different, and the person who does not have much verbal aptitude is just out of luck.

If we're talking about children in primary school, or even in high school, will the long-term outcomes be better if they learn to interact directly with each other, or if they learn to interact by commenting on each other's weblog entries (assuming that they find the latter as engaging as dealing with other kids, an assumption I very much doubt would be valid). If my outcome is for students to learn that learning does not happen in isolation, then wouldn't it make more sense to design a curriculum around collaboration, cooperation, and construction of new knowledge, and have weblogs play a supporting role, rather than being the primary focus? Or have I not understood Will's and James' points? (Always possible, my work is with adults at work, not with kids in school.)

Time to go back to work. I just had this burr under my blanket and had to get rid of it.

9:37:26 AM    

Weblogs in Education: Online Discussion and Matrix

This is interesting and certainly worth consideration when designing online education and training, especially where the approach is to be oriented toward active learning.

Matrix of some uses of blogs in education.

This week and next I'm helping to facilitate an online discussion on the use of blogs in education for about 400 members from the B.C.-wide Educational Technology Users Group.

We are facilitating the discussion through a multi-author Typepad blog (there are 4 other facilitators involved). We've structured the sessions to begin with an introduction to what blogs are and how to read and write them. We're now moving into Day 4 and from hereon we get into far more interesting stuff - what are the actual applications of blogs in education. It is a very diverse group of participants ranging widely across job descriptions, disciplines and skill sets.

To help facilitate this discussion and my own thinking on it, I've worked up this matrix of some of the possible uses of blogs in education.

6:17:33 PM    

Breeze Live: Web conferencing from Macromedia

The field for "synchronous" events is getting larger again. The big question is, will any of the publishers and vendors in this space ever make any money? At $83 a seat per month for the hosted version, Macromedia seems to be working on that problem.

Macromedia joins Web-conference crowd. The Flash and Dreamweaver maker, with the introduction of Breeze Live, adds its product to the crowded market for online meeting software. [CNET News.com - Front Door]

Quotes from the press release:

"The product is available in both hosted and standalone versions, launched as an add-on to Macromedia's Breeze line of online corporate education software.

With Breeze Live, Macromedia faces competing products such as Microsoft's LiveMeeting, as well as software from WebEx Communications, Akiva, Viack, Latitude Communications and Centra Software, among others.

Breeze Live enables online conference organizers to set up Microsoft PowerPoint demonstrations in advance, and applications such as spreadsheets and product presentations to run automatically and be changed spontaneously, during a meeting. The software also lets its users also save live meetings.

Hosted versions of Breeze Live, including video and archive capability, start at $83 per month per user. Macromedia did not announce standalone pricing."

9:38:36 AM    

What's Working? Weblogs in Education (A Reply)

This citation is the second in a series of columns by James Farmer on xplana:

Personal Publishing in Education... What's Working?.

Here's my latest xplana piece which basically asks of weblogs in education the question 'what's working?' and to an extent 'why?'

I think that throughout my attempts to clarify what personal / social publishing can do for education I've always run up against this... if these are such free, liberating, personal tools then why don't they get used more? Originally I figured I'd got it wrong, that I'm not losing that 'control' thing that dogs so many teachers, but now I'm coming to think that in fact I'm recognising how this 'radical freedom' doesn't quite cut it and that our society (and ourselves???) demands structure, meaning and guidance...

Hmmm... still not too sure though, help!

[incorporated subversion]

Responding to just one of James' questions: "why don't they get used more?" 

Teachers don't use them more, I'm sure, because weblogs are of the lesser world of rhetoric rather than the world of logic. OK, everyone is not going to be impressed by that lame reach. Weblogs require dealing with technology, not with intellect. Closer? They require changing the way things have always been done and they require re-writing lesson plans for the umpteenth time. They involve risk (what do you do when a student uses a weblog to write up dark and violent essays that you hope and pray are only fantasies?) and additional time to evaluate, without any reward for doing well with them. And so on.

Why don't they get used more by students, to better effect? James, I guess I'm wondering what educational outcome you are "going for" with weblogs or personal publishing. Not too many students ever did all that much with paper-and-pen journals, and those that did were usually exceptional people who were already on their life's course. My recollection of students at the high school and undergraduate level is that most are set on shorter-term goals (getting finished, getting a degree, finding a job) than on a deliberate and rational path to a life of high achievement.

Weblogs are no easier than journals or lab notebooks to keep and to do well. Two-thirds of people give them up, I think because a good weblog is a hard thing to make, and because it can consume a lot of hours. The technology involved with most weblog tools (well, ALL weblog tools) is very distracting. It doesn't help one's confidence or motivation when the inevitable happens - a software glitch, a server failure, a careless keystroke, and all your work is gone forever. On top of that, having your words published publicly is a daunting thought for a lot of young people -- social embarrassment, etc. Even Darwin kept his Origin of Species as a VERY private, handwritten book circulated only among his closest colleagues for a decade or more, because he feared ridicule. I think we're asking a lot of learners when we add weblogs.

Almost no one teaches people how to use journaling (read: weblogging) as a personal tool for building up a knowledge base, or as a record of personal introspection. Hardly anyone offers a course on how to go back through your old journals (weblog entries) and gain new value from them. Are you teaching scientists, engineers and mathematicians? Your task is different from that of the person teaching writers, artists, and philosophers, isn't it? And wouldn't the uses of weblogs be different for these groups? When I was a student, it was my great privilege to work as an assistant in the University of Texas Archives, where I had access to and was able to help researchers who were using materials left by great (and, face it, some not-so-great) writers and thinkers. Later, I worked as a research assistant and accessions specialist in the University's History of Science collection, with the actual notebooks of great (and not-so-great) scientists from the Middle Ages through the early 20th century. Even forty years later, I recall clearly that their notebooks were of very different characters, and not just because their personalities were different.

I have the sense that the key to getting learners to use weblogs effectively is to find a way to help each learner find, for himself or herself, the lifelong *value* in journaling as it contributes to their life's work (whatever it will be).

If this is off the mark, I apologize. My experience is in the training (yes, that word -- not education) of adults in the business and professional worlds, not in the education of young people, so if I missed the point it won't be a surprise.

5:55:35 PM    

Fallout from Eolas lawsuit.

Jeffrey Zeldman is providing some excellent coverage on this.

Eolas: first fallout. Microsoft, Apple, Macromedia, and RealNetworks publish technical papers explaining two ways to work around the crippling of IE/Win. We examine the pros and cons of both methods and consider the merits of sitting out this round. [Jeffrey Zeldman Presents: The Daily Report]

I was going to quote the whole article, but it's better to read it on Jeffrey's actual weblog. This is vital information if you are using the Web to deliver content of any kind, including marketing and e-Learning.

5:09:19 PM    

The Entrepreneur's Take On Spam.

That's easy. Don't do it. Being an entrepreneur is about leverage. It is not about highjacking communication systems, stealing identities, or forging addresses. As you can see from the post forwarded below, spamming comments on weblogs will get you even more negatives than plain old spam email. And plain old spam email might get you a few sales, but it will outrage millions of potential customers.

Comments are turned off on this weblog because spammers from e-Learning companies left commercial adverts in comments here within two days of the launch of eLearning Entrepreneur as a category. I could have dealt with it by embarrassing them publicly, but that wouldn't have stopped others. So it's not like it doesn't happen. Even people you think of as your fellow professionals are capable of being so desperate for sales that they do something stupid.

Get your sales the old-fashioned way. Work for them. And don't buy anything from spammers.

Coping with Comments Spam - Brainstorms and Raves.

http://brainstormsandraves.com/
archives/2003/10/03/feast_61_unwanted_comments/

If you have a hate-on for comment spam you probably already have seen this, but Shirley Kaiser at brainstormsandraves.com has written a great post containing much of the collected wisdom to date on how to deal with the nefarious good-for-nothings. - SWL

10:21:51 PM    

Open source CMS and using weblogs as replacements for CMS

Hands-on Segue Demo Available.

http://www.opensourcecms.com/
modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=74

There's been a little buzz over the last few months about using blogs as replacements for CMS, and this open source example from Middlebury College is sometimes held up as an example. So I was happy to see that you can get administrator access to a hands on demo through the invaluable OpenSourceCMS site. Thanks to Charlie for the post reminding me to keep going back to this site. - SWL

12:34:13 PM    

Microsoft moving to minimize impact of Eolas ruling.

Microsoft tweaks Explorer to address ruling. The software maker moves ahead with what it calls "modest changes" to its Internet browser as a result of the patent suit brought against it by Eolas Technologies. [CNET News.com - Front Door]

In September we first heard about the outcome of this patent suit and the potential fallout. Maybe things won't be as bad as it first appeared. Quoting from the article:

"The alterations proposed by the Redmond, Wash., company include changes to the manner in which Explorer handles some Web pages that use ActiveX Controls, object-oriented programming technologies and tools found in plug-in software such as Macromedia's Flash, Apple's QuickTime, and RealNetworks' RealOne. Microsoft said it expects to make the changes to Explorer by early 2004.

If Web developers choose not to implement Microsoft's recommended changes, visitors to their sites may see a pop-up box informing them of such before Explorer will load any affected plug-in software. Microsoft also said it was working with partners to create guidelines for building Web pages making use of the pop-up box unnecessary."

This is something that anyone using the Web for marketing and for delivery of services, including e-Learning and e-Commerce, will want to pay attention to.

More comments and links to information about Microsoft's fix at Tom Gilder's weblog (I'm not quoting the title of his post -- while it is totally appropriate, if you're going to be offended at the language, you can be offended there, not here).

11:06:32 AM    

Interested in keeping up with weblogs in education?

Check out the eduBlog list.

10:57:51 AM