elearningpost » Block reading: how we read on the Web

Business Week: The New Economy’s

Business Week: The New Economy's New Lingo
Of the thousands of words added to the language over the past century, the New Economy has added its fair share already -- from bitmap to cyberspace to dot-com to edutainment. The current decade may set a record for jargon and acronym overload. It isn't merely that throngs of new biotech, telecom, and Internet terms will enter the English lexicon. Abstract business-speak can also take on several meanings -- or new ones overnight -- From Silicon Valley to Wall Street, words are entering English so rapidly that even dictionary publishers are struggling to keep up.

Permalink | Saturday, August 18, 2001

Information Week: McDonald’s Breaks From

Information Week: McDonald's Breaks From E-Learning Provider
After three years, McDonald's Corp. has dropped E-learning content developer SmartForce LLC for rival KnowledgeNet.com Inc. to fulfill the online technical training needs of its IS department's 350-plus employees.

Permalink | Friday, August 17, 2001

Tech Learning: How to Launch

Tech Learning: How to Launch an Online School
We wanted our online program to include as many elements as possible from our bricks-and-mortar schools, and to be just as rigorous. Perhaps most important, we wanted parents to feel like they had a partner in educating their children. Since we didn't really have a model to work from, there were a lot of questions: What technology to buy? Who designs the classes, and how? What is the role of the teacher? In what ways would parents be involved?...

Permalink | Friday, August 17, 2001

Sydney Morning Herald: Lies, damn

Sydney Morning Herald: Lies, damn lies and Net statistics
Researchers still love the Internet, for they continue to count the ways the ways we use it, how much we use it, where we go online and why. And the data piles higher at the merest hint of an online transaction. Yet analysts are beginning to take a more sober look at research, particularly in the aftermath of the tech wreck, reconsidering the way research is gathered and the way it is used by the companies that commission it.

Permalink | Friday, August 17, 2001

NY Times: Squeezing the Office

NY Times: Squeezing the Office Into a Palm
In a continued effort to whittle away our remaining private minutes, the makers of hand-held computers have been waging a public-relations battle for the hearts of a critical clientele: corporate technology managers, who buy products by the hundreds to issue to their employees.

Permalink | Friday, August 17, 2001

Digital Web Magazine: Community Issue

Digital Web Magazine: Community Issue (via DfC)
The new issue of Digital Web Magazine is up, and this one's all about web community. Check it out for an enlightening feature on evolt, a tutorial by Matt Haughey, and an interview with Derek Powazek on writing the book 'Design for Community' and designing community sites.

Permalink | Thursday, August 16, 2001

JOHO: Post-Modern Knowledge Management: A

JOHO: Post-Modern Knowledge Management: A One-Question Interview
Knowledge management has traditionally suffered from the hubris of modernism: the belief that we can discover ultimate truths and organize the world according to rational principles using clever code. The idea was that we should capture and organize bits of "knowledge" in central databases. The people involved were relevant only as donors to the common ontology or as empty vessels into which knowledge could be poured.

Permalink | Thursday, August 16, 2001

Fast Company: He Drills for

Fast Company: He Drills for Knowledge
Knowledge-management guru John Old drills away at a potential gusher: the collective brainpower of Texaco's 18,000 employees in 150 countries. Their pool of knowledge ranges from how best to set the stroke depth of an oil-well pump to how to get the inside scoop on top competitors. Old's mandate inside Texaco, which pumps more than 1 million barrels of oil a day, is to connect people who have questions with the people who have answers -- helping the company to work faster and more efficiently.

Permalink | Thursday, August 16, 2001

Fast Company: Who Owns Your

Fast Company: Who Owns Your Intranet?
As companies march ahead with efforts to link employees through internal Web sites, they are learning a key design principle: If you want your intranet to take off, then take a hands-off approach. The case for intranet democracy.

Permalink | Thursday, August 16, 2001

Learning Circuits: Digital Copyrights and

Learning Circuits: Digital Copyrights and Wrongs
Whether you're facilitating online learning, researching training stats, or just plain curious, it pays to know what you're getting into when using electronic content--and how to stay out of hot water. Here are some tips for navigating digital copyright issues.

The Chronicle: Senate Passes a Bill Extending Copyright Exemption to Online Courses

Permalink | Wednesday, August 15, 2001

USA Today: Investors study e-learning

USA Today: Investors study e-learning programs
Investors learned the hard way that dog food and books aren't exactly big moneymakers for online retailers. But some wonder if investors still smitten with the Internet bug are getting too giddy about stocks of companies selling education on the Internet.

Permalink | Wednesday, August 15, 2001

Yahoo! News: DigitalThink to buy

Yahoo! News: DigitalThink to buy LearningByte for 4.5 mln shares DigitalThink Inc., a provider of Internet-based education solutions for corporations, announced on Tuesday an agreement to acquire LearningByte International, a provider of custom "e-learning'' courseware, for about 4.5 million shares, or $60.5 million.

Permalink | Wednesday, August 15, 2001

Content Spotlight: Use Your Subhead

Content Spotlight: Use Your Subhead
In Web writing, we serve our readers poorly if we don't give them some way to grasp the whole document while making it easy to find and understand particular sections. Enter the subhead.

Permalink | Wednesday, August 15, 2001

The Chronicle: With National e-University,

The Chronicle: With National e-University, Britain Gets in the Online-Education Game Although only a few universities will offer courses through the e-University when it puts its first materials online next year, the government plan calls for all higher-education institutions in Britain to be members of the holding company that owns and administers the project. The e-University will not award degrees on its own, but the participating programs will be marketed jointly and will share some technological infrastructure. The effort will be financed by a combination of government and private money.

Permalink | Tuesday, August 14, 2001

Reading Online: A Face-to-Face Graduate

Reading Online: A Face-to-Face Graduate Class Goes Online: Challenges and Successes In this column, I want to share what online learning looks like in my context, the problems I have encountered, and what I have found out along the way about providing effective online learning for the teachers in my university-level courses. Clearly the use of technology as a tool for learning is something that most school educators are dealing with in their classrooms. Indeed, in Australia this has been written into school policies and curricula. However, with respect to teacher education -- be it at the preservice, inservice, or graduate level -- we are only just beginning to realize the potential that technology has for learners.

Permalink | Tuesday, August 14, 2001

MIT Technology Review: Reworking Online

MIT Technology Review: Reworking Online Work
Ray Ozzie: From the personal perspective, "online collaboration," or knowledge work with others toward a common objective, facilitated by technology, is becoming the rule as opposed to the exception. We pick our tools based upon our human needs. When we need to communicate simple messages, we choose e-mail. When we need to visually mark up an image, we oftentimes choose fax. When we need to communicate an emotion, such as a sense of urgency or happiness, we frequently choose the phone. Humans are multimedia creatures by nature, and we choose the tool that meets the need..."

Permalink | Tuesday, August 14, 2001

Web Review: Communities and Commerce:

Web Review: Communities and Commerce: Beyond the Bulletin Board
Now that the Internet economy has been rationalized, so to speak, community is once again the buzzword du jour. But this time, "community" isn't just a tacked-on benefit�a front door tool or a chat box feature added as an afterthought�it's the core of the online initiative. Communities are now being leveraged as feedback mechanisms that tie directly into a company's operations, and they're becoming the linchpin on which commerce efforts are built. Just as products and services have an impact on the community, the hope is that these communities will have a formative impact on products and services.

Permalink | Tuesday, August 14, 2001

Silicon.com: Knowledge management: It’s about

Silicon.com: Knowledge management: It's about people too
The term 'knowledge management' is outdated and confusing and should be scrapped, according to David Snowden, director of IBM's Institute of Knowledge Management, EMEA... According to Snowden, his analysis is based on a move towards studying culture as an anthropologist, not a consultant. Management consultants go into companies with pre-conceived ideas, argued Snowden, which is why they are unable to understand the knowledge management requirements within that company.

Permalink | Monday, August 13, 2001

SF Gate: Leaping ahead of

SF Gate: Leaping ahead of the competition: Some big stars in the Knowledge Universe
What do ex-junk bond king Michael Milken, Oracle Corp.'s flamboyant Chairman Larry Ellison and former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz have in common?... All three are involved with Knowledge Universe, a low-profile Menlo Park company that intends to boost education not just for kids, but also for adults and corporations.

Permalink | Monday, August 13, 2001

Fast Company: How the PC

Fast Company: How the PC Really Got Started
The personal computer celebrates its 20th birthday this month. At a gala party in Silicon Valley, the PC's original developers, including Bill Gates and Andy Grove, swapped tales of those wild and wacky days on the frontier of the computer revolution.

Permalink | Monday, August 13, 2001

Berkeley Computing & Communications: Weblogging:

Berkeley Computing & Communications: Weblogging: Another kind of website
Lloyd Nebres works for UC Berkeley's Academic Talent Development Program. For several years he has taught a summer course for high school students called The Internet Classroom... For his summer 2000 course Lloyd decided to introduce weblogging using Userland's Editthispage as weblog host. Little did Lloyd know that this would turn into a thriving community of 20-some regularly blogging high school students beyond the summer and throughout the past school year, with students introducing other friends to blogging, gradually leading to the involvement of peers, relatives, siblings, friends, and other adults. Since May 2000 Lloyd has flipped his blog daily, referring to and commenting on student blogs, posing questions and writing prompts, weaving together themes from various weblogs, and carefully pushing and pulling at the students to foster critical thinking and thoughtful writing.