Standards for online content authors
Here's a quick reference card for online writers.
Add tag Permalink | Monday, April 04, 2005
The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling
Steve Denning is out with a new book that looks at the nuts and bolts of storytelling in organizations. The first chapter of the book -- Telling the Right Story -- is available as a free download (PDF).
storytelling Add tag Permalink | Monday, April 04, 2005
Malofiej Awards 2005
The Malofiej awards for infographic excellence have been announced.
[thanks interactivenarratives]
Add tag Permalink | Saturday, April 02, 2005
Children learn best when teaching is out of sync
Here's an interesting study on using gesture for teaching math to third-and-fourth graders:
University of Chicago researchers Melissa Singer and Susan Goldin-Meadow have done extensive research on the role of gesture in teaching, finding that teachers spontaneously use gestures to teach, and that the use of gestures increases when children are having difficulty with a topic. Surprisingly, they also found that very often these gestures did not match the verbal lesson being given by the teachers.
The researchers have found that children learn better when the teacher's speech and gestures differ.
Add tag Permalink | Saturday, April 02, 2005
Cisco CEO on U.S. Education: ‘We’re Losing the Battle’
David Kirkpatrick reports on John Chamber's lament on the state of US education:
To remain a player in the global economy, Chambers urges that our nation reform its primary and secondary educational system from kindergarten all the way through college and beyond. And he says we have to focus on preparing students for careers in engineering and other technical disciplines.
Add tag Permalink | Thursday, March 31, 2005
Why Logic Often Takes A Backseat
This article from BusinessWeek highlights another neuroscience application: neuroeconomics:
"Neuroeconomics, while still regarded skeptically by mainstream economists, could be the next big thing in the field. It promises to put economics on a firmer footing by describing people as they really are, not as some oversimplified mathematical model would have them be. Eventually it could help economists design incentives that gently guide people toward making decisions that are in their long-term best interests in everything from labor negotiations to diets to 401(k) plans."
Neuroscience has been getting a lot of buzz lately. National Geographic, Nature, New Scientist, Business Week and others have had feature-length articles on neuroscience applications. On the learning front too, George Siemens has already pointed out that neuroscience may go on to shape and define the future of learning.
Here are two books that have helped me to learn about neuroscience: Steven Johnson's Mind Wide Open, and Tom Stafford and Matt Webb's Mind Hacks.
neuroscience Add tag Permalink | Thursday, March 31, 2005
Decision Games
Here's Jay's account of a project that I'm associated with: decision games. This term was coined by Gary Klein, in his book, Power of Intuition. Decision games are high impact learning events that are aimed at getting learners to practice decision-making skills that are to be exercised in ambiguous, uncertain events such as project management, risk management, competition analysis, emergency management, disaster management, etc.
Together with KM experts, Straits Knowledge, I'm involved in developing decision games that combine Gary Klein's work with intuitive decision making and Dave Snowden's work with narrative analysis to elicit knowledge from expert practitioners (as opposed to subject matter experts). What results from these techniques is a far cry from what is possible by just analyzing subject matter. (Malcolm Gladwell's Blink gives a good account of the kind of knowledge that can be elicited through these techniques.)
I will post more on this method at a later date. By the way, if you are wondering where I feature in Jay's article, it's with Pebble Road, my company. Yes, I've finally started out on my own. The website is a little bare right now, but will post more when I get the time.
gaming, decision-making Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Personal learning
Denham Grey has written a wonderful post on the principles of learning for the new age:
"The key to learning is not the medium nor the message, it is the quality of the dialog with your peers that really matters."
Add tag Permalink | Monday, March 28, 2005
Controlled and suggested vocabularies: Are tags making us dumb?
This post, by David Weinberger, offers wonderful insights on the pros and cons of folksonomies. Although much is said about the bottom-up, emergent properties of folksonomies, I'm still quite skeptical about the current state of folksonomy implementations. Decentralizing to these extremes always has its limits. Weinberger in his post lists some of these limits. I would add the phenomenon of the 'long tail' and 'information cascades' to his list.
I can't help thinking about the possibility of having a bottom-up 'synonym ring' which connects all the varying terms used for the same item. For example, PC Forum = pcforum05 = pcf = pcf05 etc. This falls into the 'aggregator' role that James Surowiecki talks about in his book, The Wisdom of Crowds. Surowiecki gives the example of Google as an aggregator of bottom-up links between pages. Here Google just identified and brought to life an already existing emergent parameter that existed between pages - the page rank via page referrals. Similarly, can a tag aggregator leverage the tag rank using tag referrals? If yes, then we have an emergent 'preferred term' with its surrounding synonym ring, which can be used to increase the recall and precision of a search.
This is getting a little out of hand. I think I need a holiday :)
Add tag Permalink | Monday, March 28, 2005
The Dawn of Intelligent Machines
Looks like advances in brain science are giving new impetus to AI-enabled machines:
"Jeff Hawkins, the inventor of the Palm and the Treo, is finally doing something interesting with his life. He is figuring out how to build machines that he believes will truly work like the human brain."
Add tag Permalink | Monday, March 28, 2005
How to start a startup
This is a good article on the points to keep in mind when you are starting a new business. It is simple and to the point.
"You need three things to create a successful startup: to start with good people, to make something customers actually want, and to spend as little money as possible. Most startups that fail do it because they fail at one of these. A startup that does all three will probably succeed."
Add tag Permalink | Thursday, March 24, 2005
The non-typographer’s guide to practical typeface selection
This is a simple guide to help you choose a typeface for your needs.
- Make a list of those “familiar” typefaces that you trust and know will work well in a variety of projects
- Supplement that list with a list of “unfamiliar” typefaces that address any specific objectives for the project at hand
- Test each typeface at small and large sizes
- Test both caps and lowercase
Add tag Permalink | Thursday, March 24, 2005
To Be, or Not To Be: Intranet Justification
Nice article that shows how to go about justifying the design or redesign of an intranet to business decision makers. Here's the whole point:
"It's our job, as intranet professionals, to help management see the true worth of an intranet beyond the dollar. They need to understand a properly built and managed intranet has long-term benefits that will affect the company and its culture as a whole. It's not just a matter of how much money it will save or make — and if management doesn't have the foresight to realize this, then perhaps they have missed the whole point."
Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, March 23, 2005
The Empathy Economy
This article on "design thinking" argues that as we are moving from "from a knowledge economy that was dominated by technology into an experience economy controlled by consumers and the corporations who empathize with them", we need different skill sets to survive in this new conceptual age. These skill sets will be centered around both design and business skills enhancing "right-brain empathy, inventiveness, and understanding."
Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, March 23, 2005
SXSW Finalists
Here are SXSW finalists in the Educational Resource category :
- Beyond the Fire: Teen Experiences of War
- Cycles: African Life Through Art
- Edheads Weather Activities
- MoMA, Tall Buildings
- Vote: The Machinery of Democracy
Beyond the Fire:Teen Experiences of War won this category.
Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Component Content Management in Practice
This paper from the Gilbane Report describes examples of high reuse content management. This is on similar grounds to what Ann Rockley has been pursuing with her "unified content" strategy.
content management Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Learner-Centered Principles and New Roles for Faculty and Students
I agree with Stephen Downes that this is a good presentation, bringing together pieces that make for an engaging learning environment. We need this kind of thinking to tip and embrace all forms of learning.
Add tag Permalink | Monday, March 21, 2005
Blogging Clicks With Colleges
More evidence that bottom-up, emergent technologies like blogs and wikis are poised to transform education.
blogging Add tag Permalink | Monday, March 21, 2005
Cool tool: SlideShowPro
If you are into making audio slideshows like the ones you see in NY Times, or putting photo galleries on the Web, check out SlideShowPro. It's Flash-based and really simple to use. It gives an aesthetic and professional feel to your presentation. I' m lovin' it!
Add tag Permalink | Monday, March 21, 2005
Infovis on Animation
This article from Infovis provides a brief on the two main uses of animation: visual narrative and process visualization.
However, my takeaway from this article is this description, which makes for a good definition of an interactive:
"The ensemble of visualization, animation and interaction make a very powerful trio both for the discovery of knowledge hidden in the data and for the transmission of the existing knowledge."
visualization Add tag Permalink | Thursday, March 17, 2005
Knowledge Representations
Denham Grey talks about the usefulness of representations:
Representations are material, they allow ideas and experience to have an independent existence in an externalized form, they help to capture emergent thought. Like a lump of clay, a representation is tangible, it can be pointed to, passed around, played with. It takes thought experimentation one step further, eliciting new ideas.
Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Five Lenses: Towards a Toolkit for Interaction Design
Tom Erickson of the IBM Watson Research Centre explores the foundations of interaction design:
In this essay I explore these issues. I begin with a definition, and illustrate my approach to partitioning the terrain of interaction design using five conceptual "lenses." In so doing, I cover most of what I see as the theoretical roots of interaction design. I then turn to the role of theory in interaction design, and suggest that a good way to begin is to assemble a toolkit of concepts for interaction design that consists of appropriately sized theoretical constructs.
[thanks mathemagenic]
interaction Add tag Permalink | Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Search optimization, not search engine optimization
Gerry McGovern on researching 'care words' to optimize search. Guess that's how a basic thesaurus is built -- being sensitive to the searcher's needs and wants.
Add tag Permalink | Monday, March 14, 2005
Video games can improve performance in vision tasks
From Cognitive Daily:
C. Shawn Green and Daphne Bavelier of the University of Rochester conducted a study in which they found that avid video game players were better at several different visual tasks compared to non-gamers.
Note that visual tasks are different from manual dexterity tasks, which video games are known to enhance, and action video games are better at improving visual tasks than space or logic-based games (e.g. Tetris).
gaming Add tag Permalink | Friday, March 11, 2005
Podcast: Simulations and the future of learning
Clark Aldrich talks about the six criteria of successful educational experiences at Accelerating Change 2004 (23.2MB).
simulation Add tag Permalink | Tuesday, March 08, 2005